Pigs at the trough -- here and in Zimbabwe

I just received an e-mail showing the opulent palatial estate of Robert Mugabe, the dictator in Zimbabwe. In the e-mail, it also showed the plight of the poverty stricken little people in that country.  Coincidentally, at the same time, I was in the midst of reading the following article, telling how Senate Republicans will not allow an extension of unemployment benefits to the out-of-work folks in our own country.  BUT they want extensions on tax cuts for the wealthiest people who live in opulence here in the U.S., while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet.  A very good question in the report below is the one by Charles Schumer regarding the Republicans' insistence on having tax cuts for the very rich extended at the same time they are denying unemployment benefits to the poor and struggling among us. (please explain to me why it is OK to take $300 billion of tax cuts for those at the highest income levels, above a million, and not pay for it," Schumer said, "and yet we have to pay for unemployment insurance extensions.)  We have our own Robert Mugabes right here in the U.S. and they are paying off our supposed "representatives" in Congress in order to enrich themselves even more.

Senate Republicans Saturday defeated a bill to reauthorize unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and a plethora of tax provisions for the middle class not because of the bill's trillion-dollar deficit impact, but because it did not include tax cuts for the rich.

"In economic times like these, 9.8 percent unemployment, you should not raise taxes on anyone," Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told HuffPost.

Two bills were defeated. By a vote of 53-63, the Senate rejected a bill by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) that would have preserved Bush era tax cuts for lower- and middle-income taxpayers, but would have allowed cuts for people earning more than $200,000 a year to expire. Four Democrats and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) joined Republicans in voting against the measure. The Senate also rejected a bill by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would have extended all the cuts, but not for anybody making more than $1 million.

The Baucus bill would have preserved Emergency Unemployment Compensation and Extended Benefits Programs created in 2008 as a customary response to rising unemployment. The programs provide up to 73 weeks of federally-funded benefits for when layoff victims exhaust the standard 26 weeks of state-funded aid. The programs lapsed last week, threatening a holiday cutoff for two million unemployed.

After Saturday's vote, it seems the only way Democrats will be able to overcome Republican opposition to the benefits will be by attaching them to a reauthorization of tax cuts for the rich.

Republicans and conservative Democrats have opposed reauthorizing the benefits without offsetting their deficit impact by cutting spending from elsewhere in the budget. But those same lawmakers have not insisted that tax cuts for the rich, estimated to cost nearly $700 billion over 10 years, be offset in any way. A yearlong reauthorization of unemployment benefits would cost roughly $60 billion.

During debate on the Senate floor, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) about Republicans' different positions on deficit reduction.  "Could he please explain to me why it is OK to take $300 billion of tax cuts for those at the highest income levels, above a million, and not pay for it," Schumer said, "and yet we have to pay for unemployment insurance extensions?"