House Speaker John Boehner has nixed the Senate’s extension of unemployment benefits, saying, there is “no evidence” Harry Reid’s approach will do anything to create jobs or improve the economy. The Emergency Unemployment Compensation ran out on Dec. 28, and Democrats have been pursuing an extension. As CBS News reports, “Two million people have already stopped receiving their checks, and 1.6 million more stand to lose them by the end of 2014 if the program was not renewed.” As we argued in January, Boehner is right – paying people not to work actually exacerbates unemployment. In fact, says the National Bureau of Economic Research, the organization that determines when recessions officially begin and end, “Most of the persistent increase in unemployment during the Great Recession can be accounted for by the unprecedented extensions of unemployment benefit eligibility.”