Dems’ Fantasy Land Meets Reality: “1.8 million Americans Have Turned Down Jobs Due to Unemployment Benefits”

Senator Berger Press Shop
1 min readJul 20, 2021

Raleigh, N.C. — When Republicans said overly generous unemployment benefits are causing problems because the government is paying people not to work, Democrats accused them of peddling a “false narrative.”

Democratic Congressman David Price said it’s just a Republican “talking point” and “there’s no evidence whatsoever that it’s true.”

When Republicans proposed opting out of the federal unemployment benefits supplement, Senate Democrats called it a “political ploy” and applauded Gov. Roy Cooper for “using his veto to stand up for jobless workers.”

A purported social policy researcher in Chapel Hill called the Republican proposal “miserly” and “punitive.”

Those Democrats were living in a fantasy land:

The data shows that 1.8 million Americans turned down job offers “specifically because of the generosity of the benefits.”

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Even the top economist in the Obama-Biden administration warned months ago that “the factors responsible for the slow employment recovery…[include] expanded unemployment insurance benefits and eligibility.” (The brilliant economists at WRAL dismissed the warning as “a myth.”)

Bottom Line: The data validates the obvious conclusion that most honest observers reached: When government pays people not to work, lots of people don’t work.

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Senator Berger Press Shop

Press releases from N.C. Senate Republicans and Senate Leader Phil Berger