Those Lazy People

Conservative ideology can explain all economic woes away. Take for instance unemployment. It isn't that companies are cutting costs by laying off or not hiring workers. It is not outsourcing. Nor is it the lack of consumer confidence that causes a lack of spending. According to Sen. Jim DeMint, people don't want to work.

DEMINT: I have talked to a lot of businesses in South Carolina who can't get employees to come back to work because they are getting unemployment and they're getting food stamps and they say call me when unemployment runs out. [...]

There are a lot of people who desperately need it and we need to make sure that we have that safety net in place, but we also have to realize there are a lot of people gaming the system right now. And we need to do better than we have done with just extending benefits, there have to be incentives for people to get back to work. These have to phase out in a way that we haven't done it before.

Another example is the millions of Americans that have had their houses foreclosed upon. It isn't banks getting getting greedy by providing credit to people that weren't financially ready to own a home. Nor is it people losing their jobs or banks illegally foreclosing with robo-signing fraudulent documents. Florida's Attorney General Pam Bondi gave the same lazy people argument.

Bondi spoke out against a proposed national settlement between 50 state attorneys general and lenders that would have cut the principal owed by homeowners. She said she was opposed to any across-the-board reductions because she didn't want to help people "who just don't want to pay their mortgage payments."

If we took DeMint's and Bondi's reasoning to its logical conclusion then President Obama cannot be held accountable for unemployment because people are too lazy to work. This is classic Republican blame the victim argument. What you won't hear is DeMint and Bondi explain how they will solve unemployment and illegal foreclosures in a way that doesn't involve standard talking points.