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With more than 1 in 5 Americans filing for unemployment benefits over the past eight weeks, policymakers’ top priority is clear: restoring conditions that allow workers to resume their previous jobs or find new ones.
Federal assistance can help bridge a temporary gap in employment and incomes, but the only long-term solution is to let people get back to work. After all, deficit-financed unemployment checks are no replacement for the valuable goods and services Americans produce.
Two bills, both introduced in Congress on Tuesday, take a very different approach to helping American workers.
The first, the Getting Americans Back to Work Act introduced by Reps. Ted Budd, R-N.C., and Ken Buck, R-Colo., would fix a highly problematic component of the CARES Act that Congress passed in March.
In addition to vastly expanding eligibility for unemployment benefits, CARES added an additional $600 a week on top of usual unemployment benefits. The Budd-Buck legislation would cap total unemployment benefits at 100% of workers’ previous wages.
Full income replacement is still a big increase from the usual 40% to 50% of workers’ wages that typical state unemployment benefit programs replace.
The CARES Act’s additional $600 per week in federal pandemic unemployment benefits is certainly generous. Too generous, in fact: It’s caused an overwhelming majority of unemployed Americans to receive more from unemployment benefits as from their previous paychecks. In many cases, workers are receiving at least twice their usual paychecks.Read the rest from Rachel Greszler HERE.
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