Lawmakers to governor: Take Trump's unemployment offer
With no congressional deal on the horizon, president pitches states a $400 unemployment supplement, with states kicking in $100 of that total.
Posted — Updated
The state can afford it, Republican leaders said, because of healthy reserves built up in recent years thanks to their conservative budgeting. They promised to approve matching funds as needed when the General Assembly goes back into session in early September.
Under the president's proposal, the federal government would cover $300 a week if the state will kick in $100.
The president signed a memorandum over the weekend authorizing another federal boost to unemployment checks, an issue that stalled out last week in wider congressional talks over a new coronavirus pandemic relief bill. The federal government had been adding $600 a week to people's checks, but that program ran out in July.
North Carolina's state benefits are some of the most meager in the nation, amounting to about half a person's salary and capped at $350 a week. Republican lawmakers cut benefits years ago to dig the state's unemployment system out of debt. Now, the state has reserves that Moore and Berger put at about $2.9 billion.
State officials scrambled over the last 24 hours to put together details on Trump's new proposal, and Cooper's press office didn't immediately respond Tuesday afternoon to a request for comment on Moore's and Berger's letter.
The group called on Congress and the Trump administration to negotiate a broader deal.
Cooper, through a spokeswoman Monday, worried that the president had tapped federal disaster funding, right at the start of hurricane season, for the supplements.
But Berger and Moore said the new program is similar to a federal Disaster Unemployment Assistance program Cooper's administration has implemented in the past. This program boosts benefits after hurricanes and other disasters, providing temporary payments in areas where a disaster leaves people unemployed.
The lawmakers said the federal disaster relief account that would fund this program has $70 billion in it now and that the president's outline funds unemployment supplements only until that account hits $25 billion. That will leave "plenty of funding in the event of a natural disaster like a hurricane," the Republican leaders said in their release.
"Gov. Cooper must act quickly because there are finite funds available," they said.
Related Topics
• Credits
Copyright 2024 by Capitol Broadcasting Company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
