Our human assets

They'll swear in our next governor this weekend, and everyone from corporate executives to newspaper editorial writers is brimming with excitement and hope. Can Rick Snyder, computer business nerd turned venture capitalist, turn Michigan's economy around? Will he attract new dynamic businesses? Balance the budget without new taxes? Leap tall buildings with a single bound?

Nobody knows, of course. When not speculating about Snyder, others in the media have been wondering about Jennifer Granholm, our outgoing governor, who is at last being blown away with the chill January winds. Will she find work in the Obama administration? Will the ex-first gentleman, Dan Mulhern, have to get a real job now? Will the couple end up hawking his leadership books on local access cable?

Uh, that's all like, uh, very interesting. Except that it isn't. Here's who we should be thinking about instead: There are more than 162,000 Michiganders who lost their jobs after the stock market crash two years ago, and haven't found new ones. They've been scraping by on unemployment compensation, which Congress extended, and then extended again.

But now, their luck has run out. We're cutting them off after 99 weeks. They aren't getting any more money, and many of them may have no idea how they are going to keep going, and eating.

There's a lot of confusion about this. Most people I've talked to don't realize that these folks are about to fall right through a big tear in our society's shredded and sinking safety net. Didn't President Obama just save them, somebody asked me, by selling out to the Republicans on tax cuts for the super-rich? Well, not exactly. Yes, there was huge controversy earlier this month, when Obama gave in and signed legislation extending tax cuts for the wealthy. He'd said he wouldn't do that.

This president wanted to extend the tax cuts for what remains of the middle class, true. But with the deficit ballooning out of control, he thought families making more than $250,000 could pay a little more. "Hell no!" their Republican vassals thundered. They had enough votes to filibuster, and the message they sent the president was this: We'll hold the unemployed hostage.

Unless the Democrats agreed to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for everyone, even those making more than $1 million a year, the Republicans wouldn't agree to continued extension of jobless benefits, which were boosted from 26 to 99 weeks to help cope with the recession. In the end, Democrats felt they had no choice. So unemployment benefits were extended, and Democrats got an expanded child tax credit as well. But the unemployment benefits were only extended to the old maximum of 99 weeks. (U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow tried to get them more time; she was ignored.)

State Sen. Gilda Jacobs, a Democrat from Huntington Woods, brought this to my attention last week. Actually, she won't be a state senator after this weekend; term limits have pushed her into what, these days, may be a more important job. Jacobs, who was known for intelligence, compassion and integrity during her senate career, will be the new head of the Michigan League for Human Services, or MLHS.

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