Left wing writer attacks government program

The length to which the Left will go to attack the Right continues to amaze even me. Consider this headline from RawStory.

Paul Ryan supports plan to let unemployed work for free
Posted on 09.18.11
By David Edwards
Categories: Featured, Say What?

Wow! I mean the meanie Repub wants people to work for free! Let's march! Let's demonstrate!

Of course that's not what Ryan says. More from RawStory:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) isn’t a fan of President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act, but he does like the idea of allowing people who are receiving unemployment benefits to work for free.

The plan is based on a program called Georgia Works which matches job seekers with employers. Under the plan, employers agree to provide up to eight weeks of on-the-job training. Workers, who can only work for 24 hours a week, continue to receive unemployment benefits instead of getting paid.

“The Georgia plan sounds pretty interesting,” Ryan told Fox News’ Chris Wallace Sunday. “I think that’s something we are looking at, which is unemployment reform.”

The facts are different. What you have here is a tax payer funded jobs training program. No one is working for free. The unemployed person is paid, the employer provides the training at no risk and the taxpayers gets their money back through future taxes on the new employees wages.

That is a win, win, win.

Now the author knows that anyone who goes past the headline will be unimpressed, so he decides to attack the program:

According to data the Georgia Department of Labor provided to The Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney, the program isn’t very successful.

Between 2003 and 2010, only 16.4 percent of people that participated in the program found work, about the same rate as those who were not participating. As of late August, there were only 19 trainees enrolled in Georgia Works.

That has to be a first. A Left wing writer attacking a government program for being unsuccessful.

Hat Tip to Mr Natural over at Talk Left.

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