Exclusive - Rep. David Schweikert: People Being Paid to Stay Home, Hence Poor Jobs Numbers

Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) told Breitbart News on Sunday that April’s jobs report was a function of paying Americans not to work, as opposed to fears among prospective workers of coronavirus infection.

“I hear the comments saying people are fearful [to work due to the coronavirus], yet I cannot find any properly put together data that actually says that,” said Schweikert on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak. “I believe that to be more anecdotal folk lore….We do have actual data of people saying, ‘Why should I take the $15-an-hour job when I’m almost making that much staying at home?”

He was speaking after Breitbart News reported, “The U.S. economy added just 266,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate ticked up to 6.1 percent, the Labor Department said in its monthly labor assessment Friday, smashing expectations.”

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Schweikert warned of long-term damage to professional development and lifetime building of new worth caused by lockdown and shutdown decrees denying people access to their livelihoods.

“When you detach people from a relationship to work, they don’t move up their skills, they don’t move up in the organization, they don’t move up in their wages, they don’t move up in their future economic value — and because of that — it hurts their lifelong earning potential, their ability to maintain and formation of family, their retirement,” he held.

He concluded, “I think a decade from now, we’re going to be looking back at this year and a half, and we’ll realize just how much damage we did, in particular to the working poor in our country.”

Pollak drew from a Wall Street Journal column by Daniel Henninger examining the impact of President Joe Biden’s proposed expansion of “middle class entitlements.”

“[Henninger] said that Joe Biden’s policies are proposing to replace the traditional model of individual striving to make a living — to move ahead, fulfill the American Dream — with this idea of middle class entitlements that are supposed to come from somewhere, where you have all the necessities of life provided for you, they’re not your responsibility, you don’t have the stress of having to get up the next day and make sure there’s food on the table at night.

Pollak considered the erosion of personal responsibility and self-growth associated with materialistic government promises.

He continued, “[The Biden administration] is exchanging a kind of sense of security — assuming we can afford all this, which we probably can’t in the long run, but assuming that we can — they’re trying to provide a sense of security and taking away that individual responsibility and individual pride that comes with chasing the American Dream.”