beneficent brazer: Daily Kos: Harry Reid calls GOP unemployment insurance ...

Sometimes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is crazy-making with his hands-across-the-aisle wimpiness. And sometimes he tells Republicans the truth. We got a taste of that Tuesday at a press conference regarding unemployment benefits:

"I think what they have in the proposed bill is the wrong side of ridiculous. They cut out a couple score of weeks. And listen to this one: As I read the bill, as my staff reads the bill, they require drug testing for people who are drawing unemployment compensation ... So there are reforms necessary, but not this."

"Ridiculous" is one of the milder words for what Republicans have been doing or trying to do with unemployment benefits for the past two-and-a-half years. Since so many of them openly say the benefits enable no-account layabouts to avoid looking for jobs, it's no surprise they've gotten their axes out to cut the program both at the federal and state levels. And now they've added drug testing because, you see, if you've been unemployed for more than six months, as 5.7 million Americans have officially been, there must be something wrong with you, not the economy. If you weren't stoned all the time, you'd have found a job long ago.

So, yes, Republicans are being ridiculous, outrageous, despicable when it comes to unemployment benefits. But while seeing Reid call them out on it is encouraging, the hint of Democratic reforms is cause for a few shivers.

Not that the federal-state partnership that comprises the 76-year-old program doesn't need revamping. It does. But all too often when we hear "compromise" in Washington these days, it means the Democrats split the difference with their ever-more right-wing Republican "colleagues." That's how a GOP-proposed 40-week cut in extended federal unemployment benefits could become, say, a 20-week cut and called a victory. That would be ridiculous.