Plus, a tax break doesn't help if you don't have a job anymore.
Unemployment usually has a lot of hoops and bureaucracy to jump through. A check in the mail? Simple, easy, and quick. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
And if you don't need it, you can throw back into the stock market, which will *gasp* help the market too.
If you ever find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.