You knew it was coming. You didn’t know when, or from whom, but conservative economic Puritanism was bound to gum up the works. Three prominent stooges—Tim Scott, Lindsey Graham, and Young and Perpetually Troubled Ben Sasse—think that the increased unemployment insurance is too luxurious and, to borrow from the great Dave Barry, I am not kidding about this, either. From NBC News:

In a statement, Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said that the bill could provide a "strong incentive for employees to be laid off instead of going to work" because some people could theoretically make more by being unemployed. "This isn’t an abstract, philosophical point — it’s an immediate, real-world problem," they continued. "If the federal government accidentally incentivizes layoffs, we risk life-threatening shortages in sectors where doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are trying to care for the sick, and where growers and grocers, truckers and cooks are trying to get food to families' tables.”

They added, "We must sadly oppose the fast-tracking of this bill until this text is addressed, or the Department of Labor issues regulatory guidance that no American would earn more by not working than by working.”



How self-employed people lay themselves off is only one interesting conundrum raised by these characters. While we’re talking about “real world problems,” how are people in states that have been locked down by their governors supposed to be “incentivized” to go to work at places that are, y’know, closed? Sasse even had the cojones to use criminally underpaid home-health aides as examples of people who will be encouraged to stay home and eat them bonbons instead of doing the thankless work that they do every day. These really are the damn mole people.



Right on cue, of course, and to the cheers of his followers, Bernie Sanders threatened to block the bill unless the stooges dropped their opposition. Which, of course, is exactly what every Republican everywhere would like. The stooges are running a bluff. They don’t want to be the people who block this. They just want to talk about blocking it. If Sanders does them the incredible favor of blocking it himself, thereby pulling Mitch McConnell out of the ditch into which the Democratic minority has rolled him, they’ll all get re-elected.

Update: Florida Senator Rick Scott apparently has jumped onto the bandwagon as well. In times of pandemic, I know that I will seek advice from the guy whose firm committed the most massive Medicare fraud in history.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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