Republicans either aren't as free market as they claim or they don't understand business

As a small business owner if I had an opportunity to spend $1.00 and get a return on that dollar of $1.61 I would jump at that opportunity. It wouldn't really matter if the idea made sense, as long as it proved it made money, the free market would love it. Republican claim to love free market ideology so logic would conclude that Republicans would love making $1.61 for investing $1.00. The problem is they love moral righteousness more.

Mark Zandi of Moody's fame put together a report showing that for every dollar spent on unemployment there was a return of $1.61 to the economy yet Republicans have vowed to end this social safety net. Their main reason is they believe that everyone that receives unemployment just isn't trying hard enough. The problem is that the vast majority of people who are on unemployment want to work. The only way they can collect unemployment was to have a job and to have lost that job. Additionally you don't get much in unemployment if you only worked for a short time period. So the people who are collecting large amounts of unemployment, previously made large amounts of money. These are by and large not lazy people.

This is a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Republicans would rather see slow economic growth, which hurts them, than give unemployment benefits to the very small percentage of people that take advantage of the system.

This is not an isolated case. Republicans are going to push hard to repeal parts of the health care reform bill. One of their big beefs is that insuring 30 million people who are with out insurance will mean higher rates for them. This is not true. Some people will see higher costs but the majority of these people will also be getting better coverage. Regardless, they feel that the 30 million uninsured are getting a free ride and that this smacks of socialism. The problem is that the uninsured don't go with out care. They just go to the emergency room and get significantly more expensive care. In addition to the extra cost, typically these people have made there illness worse by waiting to see a doctor which again increases costs. If you look at Hawaii, they have lower costs and better care thanks in large part to covering all working people. So again even though the economics show value Republicans are against it on moral grounds.

The really odd thing is that if you ask a Republican who is unemployed or uninsured about these systems they will claim that they need the assistance and that they work hard for everything they get. They somehow think that they are not like the rest of the people in the system. In reality they are exactly like the other people in the system and their moral stand against these programs is in complete contrast to their beliefs in the free market. Unfortunately that is not what Fox News tells them because these programs aren't meant to help the filthy rich whose narrative is Fox News "reporting"