Threats of violence aside, anyone who has been on unemployment (including myself) will tell you it’s a disincentive to look for work, endlessly extending it just delays the inevitable and cost the taxpayers a fortune.

WASHINGTON — When members of Congress suggest unemployed Americans aren’t trying hard enough to get jobs, U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez gets mad.

“When I hear people on Capitol Hill say the long-term unemployed are unemployed by choice, I wanna punch ’em,” Perez said Tuesday during a meeting with reporters. […]

“The thing they say that angers them as much as anything is when politicians suggest they’re unemployed by choice, they’re just sitting at home eating bonbons,” Perez said. (He didn’t cite a specific example of a politician alleging bonbon consumption by unemployed people.)

Perez has previously waded into the Capitol Hill policy debate on joblessness, repeatedly calling on Congress to revive extended unemployment insurance for the long-term jobless after lawmakers let the benefits expire last December. Republicans have tended to argue unemployment insurance doesn’t do enough to create jobs, not that it actually stops people from taking them.