Happy New Year.

Now, get off your

butt and get a job.

That’s the message Washington is using to ring in the New Year for those in our country who have been out of work the longest.

In recent years, when a person’s state unemployment benefits run out after six months, there’s a federal safety net that extends payments to those who have still been unable to find a job after 26 weeks. It’s amounted, on average, to about $1,166 per month for each recipient.

The votes were there in the Senate last month to extend those benefits when lawmakers passed the budget, but House Republicans showed the long-term unemployed the backs of their hands – and just in time for the holidays.

Those benefits expired on Saturday for about a million people and, according to The Associated Press: “The end of unemployment checks for more than a million people on Saturday is driving out-of-work Americans to consider selling cars, moving and taking minimum wage work after already slashing household budgets and pawning personal possessions to make ends meet.”

We understand and appreciate the desire of some in Congress to bring federal spending under control. The $17 trillion national debt is a drag on our economy and a legitimate national security issue, especially insofar as China essentially holds a mortgage on our nation.

Somehow, though, we don’t think that’s the fault of those people who haven’t been able to find a job, especially in an economy that has sloshed along since the 2008 recession.

Fortunately, the Senate may take up a bill next week to restore the federal benefits that kick in when state benefits run out, and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was hopeful that senators would pass that bill.

After that, Reid wants to address income inequality – the widening gap between the country’s wealthiest residents and, well, just about everyone else.

We don’t think that should be the goal of Congress. We would prefer it instead, be merely the desirable outcome of a system that serves the electorate by reaching bipartisan solutions on the host of unresolved issues that continue to plague our nation.

On the list of unfinished business facing those in Washington, we would include immigration reform, rewriting the tax code to make it fair, sensible gun laws, care for the mentally ill, and responsible energy policy.

We also have to get our entitlement systems under control, but those who want to cut benefits from the nation’s elderly and poor would have a lot more credibility if they could also see their way clear to do something about eliminating corporate welfare and tax loopholes that always, somehow, seem to accrue to the wealthy.

If Congress can’t take care of those things, it boggles the mind to think how its members believe they are up to the task of addressing income inequality.

Then again, watching members of Congress break their arms patting each other on the back after passing the budget last month, one could easily get the impression that members believed they had just spent six days creating Heaven and Earth.

After which, on the seventh day, the $174,000-per-year public servants rested.

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