Unemployed Note to Congress: We want JOBS

Note to Congress: We want JOBS but until they arrive, we need UI benefits. We are hard working Americans that you let down. Sure healthcare is important, but you should have spent the first part of the Obama administration creating jobs rather than pass the Health Care Bill. Since you did not focus on creating jobs, we are suffering in mass and now you leave us 99ers stranded without benefits while you take your fourth vacation of this congressional session. Republican or Democrat, you should all be ashamed of how you have let this country and it's citizens down.

Of course, you would have to first understand how horrible it is to watch your children suffer as they do without the food and medical care every parent should have the right to provide. You have no clue what it is like to get your power turned off, live in fear of being evicted from your home or even what it feels like to go hungry. You could not possibly understand the pain and failure we all experience after months on end desperately looking for jobs that simply do not exist.

Making a six figure income, you are all way out of touch with those who pay for that handsome salary and your benefit perks. You really need to go to the empty food banks or spend some time talking to families either on the streets or in homeless shelters during this break time away from Washington, but I doubt that you will. You will be far too busy campaigning for your reelection, or spending time with family to think about the destruction you have caused by your unbelievably callus, cavalier obstructionism (Republicans) or your lack of urgency (Democrats) on this and all matters.

You know full well that you are to blame for this recession, either by allowing our Banks to collapse the economy, rewarding big companies for shipping our jobs overseas or by cutting taxes for the wealthiest among us so they pay only a small fraction of what is their fair share of the burden. By these and other misdoings of Congress, you are turning America into a third world country and transforming us into transients.

We may be down but we are not out. We intend to make your lives as uncomfortable as we possibly can, until we get the help we need or the jobs we want and deserve. In fact, we think you need to be fired for doing such an incompetent job all around.

If you are an incumbent, be afraid. Be very afraid. It will not be the healthcare issue or the deficit that takes you down in November. It will be millions of angry unemployed Americans who cannot feed their families. We may be homeless but we will vote, if it is the last thing we do, if only to fire our tormentors who did this to us.

If you are a Democrat with a primary challenger, we may well vote you out earlier than November. If you are uncontested in your party this election year, then we will back one of your third party challengers perhaps. If you are a Republican, your fear should be the greatest, as you have proven yourselves completely unworthy of public office, period!

We want to return to being the hard working Americans we always were and not the transients that you are forcing us to become. We need your help not cheap talk and a half-assed effort. We are literally dying out here. ***Recession related suicides up 75% nationwide, our children are going hungry, we are scared and very angry at Washington for doing NOTHING to help us.

Truth be told, you are hurting all of America by refusing to stimulate the economy the best, fastest way you can. The economists agree the millions of unemployed without UI benefits to spend into their communities over the past several months, now has us perched on the verge of a double dip recession. Thanks again for all of your hard work, not! It isn't easy to ruin a great country like America, but you are doing one hell of a successful job at it, I must say.

The recession has been ongoing some 195 weeks. The 99ers, for the most part have been without benefits for the past 8 months of this year. Add that to the previous 3 to 4 months without benefits last year (during the fight for tiers III and IV) and you have millions of jobless who have gone 11 months out of 15 with no income whatsoever. Congress: We want JOBS. We are tired of having to beg our leaders for what we need to survive. Why is it that you can pass a bill helping Haiti (who desperately needed it) in 3 days time, but you will not help Americans in desperate need for nearly a year now?

In the past 12 months, Congress has taken more weeks off than the weeks granted to the unemployed in both of the last tiers combined. This is an outrage. The recession is not taking any time off and we do not want any more time off from working. We have had more time off work than we can handle, but none of it has been a vacation I can assure you.

For the good of America and the survival of millions, you need to pass The Americans Want to Work Act immediately when you reconvene in September. If you do not, then you are directly responsible for any additional job loss, suicides, hunger and homelessness that result due to your failure to get the job done and done right. Looks like the next round of job losses will be most of you come November.

***Source: The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP)