( CNN ) -- The Republicans appear to think North Carolina has the answer to their latest conundrum : how to sidestep growing calls for extending unemployment benefits for the 1.3 million Americans who depend on them without looking like uncompassionate conservatives . A measure to renew Emergency Unemployment Compensation died in this Senate last week and it 's unclear , given that Congress must now focus on a spending bill , when senators will revisit the bill . Last year , North Carolina 's jobless rate fell to a five-year low after Gov . Pat McCrory and the Republican-controlled legislature slashed unemployment benefits . The reason for this , wrote Diana Furchtgott-Roth , a former economist for the George W. Bush administration , is that unemployment is `` intricately linked to the length of unemployment benefits . '' `` If the unemployed have a source of income , '' she wrote in Politico , `` they are more likely to turn down lower-paying jobs -- even though they are losing job skills by remaining out of the labor force . The longer the unemployed are out of work , the more their skills atrophy . It is a vicious cycle leading to more long-term unemployment , a characteristic of this recession . '' This formulation achieves two things . One , it provides an economic rationale for resisting benefit extension : Jobless insurance discourages people from taking available work . Two , it provides a moral rationale : Discontinuing jobless insurance is the right thing to do . As U.S. Sen. Rand Paul , R-Kentucky , noted in the Lexington Herald-Leader : `` You could argue that conservatives who argue for shorter unemployment benefits actually have more concern for the worker than liberals who believe in no limits . Conservatives want to get every able-bodied person back into the work force . '' While there 's little doubt that Paul wants `` every able-bodied person back in the work force , '' there is ample reason to believe he and others have it upside down and backward . Jobless insurance is n't a cause of unemployment . That 's caused by an economy that , on its own , would take more than seven years , by one estimate , to return to pre-2008 levels . What 's more , Paul 's clumsy attempt to retake the moral high ground reflects another puzzle that no Republican or Democrat has thus far faced : How can we continue to promote the values of freedom , hard work and self-reliance when even a full-time job is n't enough to get by ? There 's one aspect that Furchtgott-Roth omits , and it 's a whopper . Indeed , as she noted , some overqualified people surely settled for low-wage , no-benefit jobs after Raleigh cut their jobless insurance . But the more important reason why North Carolina 's unemployment rate went down is plain to see : People stopped looking for work . More precisely , they stopped being counted . According to the Department of Labor 's most recent jobs report , the U.S. economy added far fewer jobs than expected ( 74,000 compared to 200,000 ) but the unemployment rate fell . Why ? Because of something called the `` participation rate . '' That 's the Labor Department 's best guess measure of the number of those who are currently working and those who are looking for work . December saw the lowest participation rate in four decades . A low employment rate may be good for politics ( making the rounds is an impressive graph depicting a thin blue line dramatically falling over the course of President Barack Obama 's time in office ) . But a low participation rate is bad for the economy and for everyone . It suggests an array of social ills , like millions of educated young people who ca n't get their lives started . But it also comes at a time when in Washington the need for balanced budgets trumps the need for jobs , and when all the tools used to counteract the panic of 2008 -- including `` the stimulus , '' food stamps , unemployment benefits and the Federal Reserve 's monthly infusion of $ 80 billion -- have expired or are expiring . This year may reveal just how bad the real economy is . The Republicans no doubt fear that if they agree to an extension of unemployment benefits , or compromise on any safety net program , that they wo n't get the credit . The Democrats will . And unlike the Democrats , who would be rewarded in this year 's midterm elections , the Republicans would be punished by voters who believe welfare is , as one congressman put it , `` legalized plunder . '' Such is the price for politicizing formerly nonpartisan economic issues . But the Republicans face a philosophical conundrum as well as a political one . As Senator Paul noted : `` The Republican Party has always proposed ideas of less government and more freedom . '' But if the economy on its own is incapable of creating the 7.4 million jobs needed to return to `` normal , '' what does such a formulation mean ? In terms of the long-term unemployed , it means less government equals less freedom , a lot less . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Stoehr .
John Stoehr : GOP uses North Carolina 's lowered jobless rate in unemployment debate . He says rate fell after benefits slashed . GOP argues benefits make people turn down jobs . This gives GOP cover for not extending jobless benefits , he says . But it masks economic reality . Stoehr : N.C. rate reflects people no longer looking for jobs . Where is GOP 's solution ?