Trump unemployment benefit action won’t work

Trump still can’t get his unemployment benefit executive action to work — not legally, anyway 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 on 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 by the president’s action.

Then there’s the unemployment benefit supplement. What. A. Mess.

With passage of the Cares Act pandemic relief 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, on top of whatever benefits they had already been distributing.

Now, bear in mind that states are broke.

Actually, not just broke; they’re $555 billion in the hole, thanks to lower tax revenues and higher expenses related to COVID-19. Nonetheless, they’re being asked to pony up an additional $100 per week per worker, plus spend precious resources on a separate IT system when their existing unemployment IT systems are crumbling.

If you were a governor, would you opt into this program under these conditions?

In a TV interview Sunday, 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.

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.

Given the whipsawing design of the program, which may not be legal, plus the fact that the Trump administration has already changed the rules midstream for other COVID-19 unemployment benefits programs, opting into this would be extremely risky for states.

Even if no one challenges the policy in court, states might still reasonably fear that the Trump administration would renege on the deal to reimburse them for $300 in weekly benefits, once administration attorneys and budget officials belatedly remember the Stafford Act’s requirements.

Meanwhile, the White House is declaring victory, with outside adviser Stephen Moore proclaiming Trump’s toothless, legally dubious actions “a masterstroke.” Premature victory laps on administrative actions are par for the course with this administration, which has lost 90 percent of all legal challenges to its regulatory policies.

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 IAlone-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.