GOP’s jobless benefit plan could mean delays, states warn
A Republican proposal to slash the $600 weekly benefit boost for those left jobless because of the coronavirus shutdown could result in weeks or even months of delayed payments in some states.
Older computer systems that took weeks to set up for the initial federal unemployment enhancement would need to be reprogrammed again twice under the GOP plan.
In Florida, state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from Orlando, said the state has not even gotten the original supplemental benefit to everyone entitled to it.
“So the idea of changing the current process that has taken us months to put into place, that is still not even perfect, is a scary thought,” she said. “These changes, whatever they end up being, are going to create more bureaucratic layers for people to get the relief they need. Meanwhile we have bills to pay, we have to put food on the table, we have medical expenses and a lot of people are suffering.”
How to handle unemployment is a fiercely contested part of the debate as Congress negotiates the latest relief legislation.
Democrats want to bring back the federally funded $600-a-week unemployment bonus that is expiring, saying it’s a way to keep families and the economy afloat in a time when there are far more people out of work than jobs available.
Republicans argue the current amount is so high that it encourages people to remain on unemployment. They want to reduce it in two steps: First, by cutting the benefit by twothirds — to $200 a week through September. Then they want to switch that flat rate to a percentage in which the unemployed would receive benefits equal to no more than 70% of their previous incomes in November and
December.
The debate isn’t only about the economy and ideology. It’s also about what’s doable technologically, especially on software many states use that dates to the 1970s.
Some states took a month to handle the initial $600 a week benefit when it went into place this spring, leaving laid-off workers in the lurch as the numbers of unemployed skyrocketed. Last week, more than 16 million Americans were receiving unemployment benefits.
“Anything other than a flat rate would take time to program in our system because it would require individual income calculations for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans receiving unemployment benefits,” Bret Crow, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, said in an email.
He said it wasn’t clear how long it might take to switch the system.
In Tennessee, the Department of Labor and Workforce Development says it would need “ample time” to make changes; just how much depends on what the policy is.
Washington was among the first states to implement the $600 benefit boost. But Mike Faulk, a spokesman for Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, said big changes would slow things down there, too.
“We are concerned by any large-scale changes to the federal pandemic unemployment benefits,” Faulk said in a statement. “It could delay benefits to hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians and put a significant burden on state unemployment agencies.”
The state’s employment security commissioner, Susan LeVine, wrote the state’s congressional delegation this month telling them, “Simply put, state unemployment systems cannot flip a switch overnight on August 1, 2020, and will require a transition period.”