Congress has repeatedly extended unemployment benefits, but that doesn't make the move popular among Florida's Republicans or independents.
Though Florida has one of the highest jobless rates in the nation, only 22 percent of Republican voters support extending unemployment compensation, according to a new Sunshine State News Poll.
By contrast, a solid 68 percent of Florida Democrats back the extension.
"Republicans believe reining in the nations debt and rising deficit is paramount, even if it means unemployed Floridians face continued hardships," said Jim Lee, president of Voter Survey Service, which conducted the polling for Sunshine State News.
"Democrats, on the other hand, believe its governments obligation to step in and help those in times of need, and are generally less concerned with calls for fiscal restraint if they believe its money well spent," Lee said.
The Florida poll results among Republicans seem to mirror a new national poll by The Wall Street Journal, in which a majority of Americans say they believe the top priority of Congress should be deficit reduction and reducing federal spending, even if it means it takes the economy longer to recover.
"Opposition to a further extension of unemployment benefits by Republicans is also a sentiment shared by 'independent' voters, which is why Congress wrestled so hard earlier this summer with the extension of these benefits on an issue that normally would have been a no-brainer," Lee said.
"However," Lee noted, "given how much the public sentiment has shifted, the Democrats leading the charge in Congress and the U.S. Senate had a hard time even getting their own members on board."
The White House and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill maintain that jobless benefits serve as both a safety net and a stimulus to the economy.
Republicans counter that successive extensions take away incentives to find work. They cite statistics showing that the largest plurality of recipients typically finds employment within weeks of their jobless benefits ending.
The debate is sure to continue as jobless rates edged up this month.
The U.S. Labor Department said that new jobless claims filed last week unexpectedly rose by 12,000 to hit 500,000, the first time since November that the half-million mark has been reached.
Though Congress last month passed a jobless benefits extension, the boostlasts only until Nov. 30. Between now and Dec. 31, 2.37 million Americans will stop getting unemployment checks, according to Labor Department statistics.
VSS, an independent polling company which is a division of Susquehanna (Pa.) Polling & Research, questioned 1,000 likely Democratic and Republican voters across Florida Aug. 9-12 and Aug. 12-15. The poll's margin of error is 3.1 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
