GOP’s pandemic plan to cut benefits

After two months of foot-dragging, Senate Republicans on Monday unveiled a heartless and irresponsible cut to weekly emergency unemployment benefits that demonstrates that they still don’t understand the gravity of the pandemic.

With coronavirus cases surging across much of the nation, Congress should be encouraging non-essential workers to stay home and helping them pay their bills. Instead, the compromise Senate Republicans hammered out with the Trump administration seems designed to force another premature reopening of the economy.

The paltry benefits Senate Republicans propose would leave millions of unemployed Americans unable to pay their bills. It would be great if we could get them all back to work, but, in large part due to the failure of the Trump administration, we still don’t have adequate testing capacity to safely do so.

This is a time when we should be rallying as a nation to ensure everyone has a roof over their head, funds to pay their utility bills and food to feed their families. Instead, the Republican plan would lead to widespread poverty — especially endangering those already living mostly on the margins.

In March, Congress approved a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill that included supplemental federal unemployment benefits of $600 per week on top of the smaller benefits provided by individual states. But those federal benefits expire this week.

House Democrats in May approved another $3 trillion coronavirus relief plan that included provisions to extend the current unemployment benefits until Jan. 31. But Senate Republicans and President Trump were unable to agree until last weekend on their counterproposal.

While both plans have many other important provisions that will be dissected in the days ahead, unemployment benefits are the primary feature for ensuring families can financially survive during the pandemic.

The $1 trillion GOP plan calls for cutting the supplemental benefits by two-thirds, to $200 a week, for two months. Then, the combined state and federal benefits would be set at 70% of a worker’s salary.

Calculating unemployment benefits based on a worker’s salary makes sense and is how they are traditionally provided. But back in March, when Democrats proposed setting benefits at 100% of salary, they were told that many states’ antiquated computer systems could not handle it.

The flat $600 was a compromise. It resulted in many lowincome workers receiving more in unemployment benefits than they were earning on the job. Republicans see this as a work disincentive.

In normal economic times that would be a legitimate concern; it’s misplaced when the nation faces soaring unemployment and should be keeping people home to slow the spread of the coronavirus. And, if you want to stimulate the economy, there’s no better way to do that than by putting money in the hands of those with the lowest income, who are most likely to spend it.

That said, the bigger issue is the amount of the unemployment benefits Republicans are now proposing, as a flat federal supplement of $200 a week and then as a combined state and federal total of 70% of salary. Neither is adequate to stave off widespread poverty. Many lowincome workers were barely making ends meet before the pandemic; expecting them to do so at 70% of their past income is just cruel.

So is the game of chicken Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been playing with their lives. For months, he refused to discuss a new relief package. Now, as supplemental unemployment benefits are expiring, he and the president are offering crumbs as a replacement.