A guy I know who works with troubled kids says the more horror stories he hears the more grateful he is for his own childhood. He was never abused. His parents loved and protected him. His schools were safe.

Me, too. I was so lucky that when I went to my first consciousness raising session as a young feminist in the 1970s I had nothing personally sad or bad enough to share. And yet in all my years since, as a journalist, I’ve been constantly reminded of the fragile line between good and bad fortune.

The faithful worker gets downsized. The steady job disappears to Mexico. Riding high in April, shot down in May. That’s life, sang Sinatra.

I would bet that even those cushioned members of Congress who have never personally experienced poverty or want still realize that fortune can flip on a person. And while that doesn’t necessarily turn one into a sympathetic bleeding heart, like my friend and me, it must create some awareness that we are all vulnerable and at times need each other.

Yet, in deciding whether to extend emergency unemployment insurance many of our leaders, largely Republicans, seemed to have locked up their hearts in their safety deposit boxes. No more pity. No more money.

Rachel Maddow assembled some pretty shameful comments by those scornful and suspicious of out-of-work Americans. There was Tea Party sweetheart Sharron Engle saying the unemployed are spoiled and need to go looking for an honest job. Orren Hatch of Utah declared that if you give the unemployed money they’ll use it on drugs. Andre Bauer of South Carolina said providing checks to the unemployed is like feeding stray cats who just keep on breeding.

These people act like the jobless are no longer part of their world. What about the fact that the unemployed use their checks to buy the goods and services that keep other people working? And that unemployment recipients pay federal income tax on their benefits. And that people who are unemployed vote. Plus, they are not suffering alone. A Pew report showed that more than 55 percent of adults in the U.S. labor force are feeling the impact of unemployment or wage and work hour reductions.

Some misfortunes that wipe people out are pure bad luck, like illness, accidents and natural disasters. But those who have lost jobs, homes and opportunities in these bleak times might rightly consider themselves victims of manufactured calamities. Their personal disasters were in large part produced by some very rich and powerful people, bankers, speculators, hedge fund operators and regulators who didn’t do their job. And by the politicians who let them get away with it.

Eleven point four million Americans are out of work and trying to figure out what to do next. For members of Congress, who are always so worried about keeping their jobs, to turn their backs on their unlucky brothers and sisters is heartless and short-sighted. Some might even say un-American.