Michigan state legislator: Unemployed should ‘man up’ and get a job

Rep. Ken Horn (R-Frankenmuth), the legislator who wrote the bill to diminish Michigan’s social safety net and remove residents from the assistance rolls, says the unemployed will just have to “man up and feed their family.”

In an interview with The Bridge, Horn says:

Bridge: More than 11,000 families will be losing cash assistance next month because of welfare reform you authored. What will they do?

A: They’ll get jobs. The average cash assistance is $515 a month. That equates to a part-time job, 16 hours a week, at minimum wage. There are plenty of those jobs out there…

Bridge: What do you think we’ll know about welfare reform in six months that we don’t know now?

A: We’ll find out what 48 other states have already found out, that people will find their way in life, they’ll pick up a hammer or a paint brush and man up and feed their family. We have to pull this wagon together. I have confidence people will do the right thing.”

He wasn’t asked how getting someone to “man up” would create a job for them. Near the end of last year, before the economy worsened again and the unemployment rate jumped back up, the Department of Labor reported that there were twenty million unemployed Americans and a total of 3.2 million jobs available.