The Chicago Tribune’s editorial on June 9, 2010, “Benefits — and costs,” came up with these important points:

* A stunning 46 percent of all jobless U.S. workers have been out of work for at least six months.

* Unemployment benefits account for a relatively modest part of federal spending.

* Even with these extensions, 85 percent of these long-term unemployed still would not have jobs. The other 15 percent? Many wouldn’t be in “good” jobs.

* Rebuilding a stable career after lengthy unemployment typically takes as much as a decade. Involuntary layoffs result in sharply reduced lifetime earnings.

* Not everybody will make it: Skills acquired in prior years don’t necessarily match up with the jobs available. Employers have gotten better at substituting technology for workers.

* Fear and uncertainty about the economy continues to discourage hiring.

* No one should underestimate the devastating consequences of the recession, especially for the long-term unemployed and their families. Only the most heartless among us could fail to feel the pain of the long-term unemployed.

The editorial board of the Chicago Tribune’s conclusion: Screw ‘em.

Why? How could the board be among the most heartless among us? Why? The deficit.

Now I’m against carrying a huge deficit as much as anyone. But the last drop that I would want to take out of that bucket would be from the long-term unemployed. If you want to work on the deficit, how about cutting a chunk from the taxpayer-funded government subsidies to the oil companies? I mean, as the editorial says, the federal deficit is “huge. Unsustainable. An obstacle to future growth. A ball-and-chain around the ankles of our children, and their children.” Why subsidize the oil companies at all?

Do we get a benefit from these subsidies?

The subsidies for our “poor” friends at BP and ExxonMobil are one slice of a corporate welfare pie.

Of course, there are many liberals and progressives who have been working to reduce these subsidies for years, with no luck. But even conservative groups have been calling for an end to Corporate Welfare in America.

It seems odd to me that the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune selectively worries about the deficit to the detriment of struggling Americans.
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