More than 40 religious leaders from the North Shore and elsewhere in the Chicago area have sent a letter to Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), calling on him to help families struggling with unemployment. The clergy have asked Sen. Kirk to support the extension of emergency unemployment compensation (EUC), a federal program that provides unemployment aid after state benefits have been exhausted. This aid helps families pay bills and put food on the table, while they seek work in a difficult job market. EUC expired last December, and Congress has so far been unable to reinstate it, causing more than 2 million people to lose this vital assistance, including more than 110,000 from Illinois.
Sen. Kirk has twice voted against reinstating EUC, even though the unemployment rate in Illinois is 8.9 percent””the third highest in the nation. The last vote, which happened in February, fell one vote short of passage. Sen. Kirk’s “no” is widely seen as decisive in killing that bill, and he will hold the key vote when the Senate again considers the bill, which may be as early as next week. The letter follows….
[i]The clergy have asked Sen. Kirk to support the extension of emergency unemployment compensation (EUC), a federal program that provides unemployment aid after state benefits have been exhausted[/i]
If the Chicago area clergy were really pastorally concerned about the long-term unemployed they would be cheering Sen. Kirk onward and writing to their Democratic legislators about repealing Obamacare which the CBO has predicted will KILL 2 million jobs, kill all the useless government spending which drags down the private sector economy, and eliminate the minimum wage which does nothing but kill jobs for lower-skilled workers, many of those who are the long-term unemployed. Then they would ask President Obama to get rid of the EPA which is killing manufacturing and farming jobs [big part of the Illinois economy].
But then, maybe they just aren’t really all that concerned.