Trump can’t get his unemployment benefit to work – not legally
It’s never a good sign when a president announces five versions of the same policy within 48 hours and still doesn’t land on one that’s legal.
The Trump administration unveiled four executive actions last Saturday, allegedly to show leadership when Capitol Hill negotiations over more coronavirus relief broke down. Never mind that the impasse happened partly because the administration demanded policies the president’s own party doesn’t want; and also partly because the White House representative in the talks, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, reportedly decided to go on vacation. President Donald Trump anointed himself savior anyway.
His executive actions, he declared, “will take care of, pretty much, this entire situation.”
Instead, he revealed his administration’s inability to do the bare minimum homework necessary even when it actually wants to govern.
Trump’s memorandum allowing federal student loan payments to continue being deferred, through the end of the year, seems fine. But his anti-eviction order does nothing to stop evictions. His payroll tax deferral, advertised as a tax cut, could actually raise taxes if employers take advantage of it — and knowing this, employers probably won’t. So that will likely do nothing, too. It’s also not clear whether the treasury secretary even understands which payroll taxes are supposed to be deferred.
Then there’s the unemployment benefit supplement. What. A. Mess.
In March, Congress created a $600 federal supplement to state unemployment benefits. This was a lifeline to millions of families. The supplement expired July 31, though, because members of Congress couldn’t come to terms on an extension. Republicans insisted the supplement was so generous that it discouraged work. Five studies find otherwise.
So Trump decided to supplement unemployment benefits by executive fiat, allegedly providing an additional $400 per week. The administration said it would take $44 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, earmarked for natural disasters, to fund a new $300 weekly payment per worker. But states would get the money only if they kicked in $100 for each worker from their own coffers.
States would also have to build an information technology system from scratch to administer this $400, because they cannot legally use their existing unemployment insurance infrastructure to pay out benefits not authorized by Congress.
Now, bear in mind that states are broke.
Actually, not just broke; they’re $555 billion in the hole. Nonetheless, they’re being asked to pony up $100 per week per worker, plus spend precious resources on a separate IT system when their existing unemployment IT systems are crumbling. The IT build could take weeks or months, while the $300 federal benefit is expected to last only about six weeks.
Additionally, the parallel unemployment benefit system might not survive a legal challenge, given that Trump may not have statutory authority to redirect congressionally appropriated funds this way.
If you were a governor, would you opt into this program under these conditions?
The director of the National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, acknowledged that the White House had not asked states this question. Soon, though, it got an answer: Governors from both parties declared the program administratively unworkable. The bipartisan National Governors Association expressed concern “about the significant administrative burdens and costs this latest action would place on the states” and asked for congressionally appropriated funds instead.
So, Trump and high-level officials kept changing the details, apparently in an attempt to make the plan more appealing to states ...
Sometimes the White House said maybe the feds would provide the entire $400 without requiring states to kick in 25%. Sometimes aides said other money the states were already spending would count as a sort of artificial 25% funding match, meaning each worker would get an additional $300, not the $400 advertised.
By Tuesday evening, at least five contradictory versions of this parallel benefit system had been communicated by various Trump officials, according to a running tally from Georgetown law professor David Super. And if the original design were in a statutory gray area, Super says, the revised versions waiving additional state contributions are “not remotely legal.”
... To be fair, even if the president were competent — and advisers actually did their homework before announcing big policy changes — executive orders could still never substitute for much-needed legislative action right now. Congress must exercise its powers of the purse and pass more COVID-19 relief. Not just for enhanced jobless benefits but also for more general state fiscal aid, among other priorities.
But in declaring that he’s solved all these problems, President I-Alone-Can-Fix-It hasn’t hastened advanced legislative negotiations — he’s made a deal less likely to happen. And America’s unemployed will pay the price.