It began in Virginia yesterday, with President Obama’s DNC chairman, Tim Kaine, taking the first hit.
Virginia’s Republican-run House of Delegates rejected a proposed expansion of unemployment benefits Wednesday, along with $125 million in federal stimulus cash to pay for it.
On a mostly party-line 46-53 vote, the House turned down amendments by Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine that were necessary to make Virginia eligible for the federal aid.
… Wednesday’s vote makes Virginia among the first states to definitively repudiate the unemployment insurance expansion.
The vote was also a stinging rebuke to Kaine, Obama’s hand-picked chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and becomes a major issue in Virginia’s elections this year for governor and all 100 House of Delegates seats.
… Kaine’s amendments would have expanded jobless benefits for the first time to part-time workers and doubled the period during which people who have lost their jobs can receive benefits if they are in retraining programs.
The beef is the “unemployment insurance expansion,” which Republicans, but also some Dems, believe is a new tax increase on employers. However, Virginia’s Kathy Byron (R-Campbell County) may come to regret this comment: “It is not stimulus. Paying workers not to work does not promote economic growth.” There’s that old GOP bootstraps argument, never mind if the unemployed have no bootstraps.
“There’s an awful lot of people who are hurting in Virginia, and the message to them seemed to be: ‘We don’t care. Fend for yourself.’” – Gov. Tim Kaine
Other states are sure to follow, though South Carolina’s Governor Sanford has relented, with unemployment money rolling in. That’s because he was basically shamed into doing it. Seeing your run for president go down the drain before it gets started evidently wasn’t where Mr. Sanford wanted to position himself.
I don’t know about you, but I’m already seeing TV ads targeting Republicans running across my brain. They’re making themselves a big target for workers and Democrats.
