Press Releases Archive

At a campaign meet-and-greet on Monday, Congressional candidate Michelle Rollins expressed her opposition to extending unemployment benefits, suggesting that they discouraged unemployed Delawareans from looking for jobs. Her comments, along with similarly out-of-touch comments from other candidates, have gotten wide notice from local and national publications this week.

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Washington Post -
Let’s call it the “Let Them Eat Want Ads” Caucus — those candidates and public officials who argue that unemployment benefits are problematic because they discourage people from seeking jobs… And let’s add another Republican to that caucus: Candidate Michele Rollins, who’s running for Mike Castle’s open House seat in Delaware… Rollins, who’s running in a contested race against green technology exec John Carney, was asked by a constituent if she would have voted to extend unemployment benefits. She suggested she wouldn’t, claiming that “for someone who hasn’t worked in two years” it’s “pretty hard to get energized to go back and look for a job.”

DelawareLiberal.net -
So listen up Delawareans — Michelle Rollins thinks that the reason you are unemployed for almost two years is that you are happy collecting a government check. Not that her party crashed the economy and there are way fewer houses and buildings being constructed; or that manufacturing and retail jobs have disappeared because people are still cautious about buying things. Know that her agenda if elected would be to make sure that the working families hit hard by the repub-engineered recession would be thrown an anchor.

Washington Monthly -
The moral of the story seems to be that conservative Republicans just don’t seem to like the unemployed. If every American who’s had to rely on jobless benefits since the start of the recession was poised to vote in November, the GOP would be in a bit of panic right now.”

Mother Jones -
Any chance of Rollins winning over the 8.5 percent of Delaware citizens who are unemnployed just plummeted. Indeed, I’ll bet that those 37,000 or so jobless people in her state would take offense to her claim that unemployment insurance is the same as “pay[ing] people to do nothing” and that aid makes people “do nothing for a long time.” I’ll bet most of them would tell Rollins they’re sending out resumes every week, showing up at job fairs, dropping in on employers to ask about openings—hardly sitting around and continuing “to do nothing.”

Bluestem Prairie wonders if Minnesota congressional candidate Randy Demmer would join Rollins in the “Let Them Eat Want Ads” caucus, if both were to be elected.

Millionaire Republican shows how out of touch she is with the concerns of real Delawareans

Rehoboth, DE – At a campaign meet-and-greet at the Hampton Inn on Monday, Michelle Rollins demonstrated how out of touch she is with working families by suggesting that continued benefits for out of work Delawareans are the cause for ongoing unemployment. She also indicated that she would have voted against extending unemployment benefits for families in need.

When asked if she would support proposed extensions to unemployment benefits, Rollins answered:

“Truthfully I probably, lets see 99 weeks is almost two years. A few weeks shy of two years, 52, 52, 104. Probably at week 80 I would have made sure that everybody got a notice that week 99 was coming and the benefits were going to be done. Um… someone who hasn’t worked in two years, pretty hard to get energized to go back to look for a job. I know that this is a bad market and this is a bad time but you just cannot keep paying people, cannot keep taxing us to pay people to do nothing because they will continue to do nothing for a very long time and I feel we are entitled to a little more than that.  Against it.”

“Multi-millionaire Michelle Rollins is hopelessly out of touch with the struggle of working-class Delawareans. For her to suggest that unemployment benefits are the reason why people remain out of work proves that she just doesn’t get it when it comes to the struggles of hardworking Delaware families,” said Katie Ellis, Deputy Executive Director for the Delaware Democratic Party. “Rollins fails to understand that folks aren’t unemployed by choice; they are forced to go on it because they have no alternative. Delaware has been hit hard with job losses at G.M., Chrysler, and Valero, and while the administration has had great success in re-opening those facilities, the jobs will take time to come back. The last thing we should do is turn our backs on those who are struggling, like Rollins suggests.”

“It’s obvious that, if elected to Congress, Rollins would ignore the day to day struggles of working-class Delawareans, and as a result she can’t be trusted with that responsibility.”