Republicans have their trigger finger ready to “shoot the hostages” (the American middle class) in order to preserve tax breaks for the top 2 percent. One way the GOP excuses their selfishness is by implying that unemployed people are simply lazy, and killing their safety-net benefits will motivate these “victims” to find work.

However, a new study blows that Republican falsehood right out of the water.

Disproving the notion that Americans want a free ride, economists find that up to half of eligible people didn’t claim unemployment benefits, according to the report Unemployment Insurance: Payments, Overpayments and Unclaimed Benefits, which analyzed U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.