Biden Claims He’s Seen No Evidence that Unemployment Benefits are Discouraging People from Returning to Work

Frequent viewers of cable news television have heard repeated claims that the reason why unemployment numbers remain at the very high level of six percent, is that unemployment benefits are discouraging people from returning to work. President Joe Biden aimed to squash that idea, however, during a midday address about jobs and government assistance to help a cratered economy emerge from the ill effects of Covid-19.

Fox News programming has been particularly strong on reports that employers are finding it difficult to hire people, claiming that many are too happy with government benefits to get back to work, but these reports have surfaced as well on CNN. And indeed, many of these reports feature small business owners making that claim.

A less than impressive jobs report emerged on Friday of last week, which Biden referenced. “I know there’s been a lot of discussion since Friday’s report that people are being paid to stay home rather than go to work,” he said. “We don’t see much evidence of that,” but confusingly followed with “that is a major factor.

He then clarified by noting, “It’s easy to say the line has been because of the generous unemployment benefits that it’s a major factor in labor shortages,” adding “Americans want to work.”

The president retold a story familiar to anyone on the campaign trail about how his father spoke about the importance of being gainfully employed. “As my dad used to say, ‘A job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity, your place in the community, to be able to look at a kid in the eye and say everything is going to be okay.'”

“I think the people who claim Americans won’t work, even if they find a good and fair opportunity underestimate the American people,” Biden clarified. “So we will insist that the laws followed with respective benefits but we are not going to turn our backs on our fellow Americans.”

Biden wrapped this portion of his speech by resetting the scale of the economic issues he inherited and made clear who he feels is to blame.”22 million people lost their jobs in this pandemic through no fault of their own,” he said. “They lost their jobs to a virus into a government that bungled its response to the crisis and failed to protect them.”

This is terrific news for conservative television programmers who just had a week’s worth of subject matter gracefully dropped in their laps. One can almost smell the outrage brewing from the not-so-distant future.

Watch above via Fox News.