I am one of those '99 week unemployment people". NO!! I have not got to the point where all I want to do is "sit on my butt" and collect underemployment benefits for the rest of my life, especially since my former job allowed me the luxury of spending over $5000 a year on vacations all over our country with first class accommodation, and that's just for starters. I would take my former 85K a year job back in a minute, or at this point, half or a forth of that to say good-bye to unemployment where I am struggling to make my house payment and have now used all of my retirement to survive to this point.

I am not sure where people like yourself are coming from, but unemployment benefits is NOT the key to a 'rich, easy street future'. When you are down to selling off one of your cars ( and both are very old and not worth a lot) and a good part of your coin collection like me, you're hitting rock bottom. Everyday I go through the pains of not being able to find a job and in the interim, cheering for a President that I did not vote for to get me another unemployment extension just to give me hope.

As a terribly sick person from birth and throughout most my life, I never gave up hope that I would be able to leave disability and other 'hand-out' programs. But I did! And at 42 years old I received my degree in Aerospace Engineering and landed a job with one of the premiere Aerospace Company's in the world. I am certainly not giving up for a lifetime of unemployment sir and I think I speak for the majority of those of us who are in my situation in saying so. The people you are referring too, are very much in the minority and a very small minority at that. They were probably making very little as an employed person to begin with. So therefore, being on unemployment for them is not that much different when they were working.

So Ginny, please don't be so short-sighted, insensitive and totally uninformed which has lead you to over simplified brash statements. None of us unemployed are counting our benefit dollars making plans for our next trip to France or wherever. We are truly counting our benefit money struggling still to make home payments, car payments, tuition payments and in many situations, wondering where our next meal is coming from.