NC governor calls for increase in some of nation's lowest unemployment benefits
Gov. Roy Cooper included the increase, and other unemployment reforms, in his budget proposal this week. There seems to be little Republican support, and little chance for passage.
Posted — Updated"The short answer is no," Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said Thursday. "I really think increasing the benefit for unemployment at this time is the wrong tack to take if we want to get more people into the workforce."
Unemployment in North Carolina generally pays about half a person's salary, up to a cap of $350 a week. Cooper wants to increase that cap to $450 and tie future increases to inflation.
His budget would also boost the minimum weekly benefit from $15 to $100, and it would increase the number of weeks people get unemployment, though the total number of weeks would still be tied to the state's unemployment rate, going up as the economy worsens and more people are out of work.
Cooper's budget also includes a small tax cut for businesses, which pay into the unemployment trust fund to cover benefits. That rollback largely would be offset by a new "assessment" redirecting about $91 million a year from the trust fund to a new fund paying for job training programs around the state.
Berger said Thursday that he wasn't familiar enough with this proposal to comment on it. But Sen. Ralph Hise, a member of Republican leadership in the Senate, blasted the idea as a "tax we kind of hide."
The unemployment trust fund has just under $4 billion in it now, one of its highest points historically and one of the largest such funds in the country. But Republican lawmakers remember a decade ago, after The Great Recession decimated the trust fund and it owed $2.75 billion to the federal government.
Hise, R-Mitchell, said lawmakers may look at benefit levels this year given the trust fund's size but that "personally, I would be much more supportive of just reducing the rate we're taxing businesses."
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