Editorial: Legislative bluster doesn't help unemployed make ends meet

CBC Editorial: Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020; Editorial #8575
The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company.

We are at a loss for words to describe state Senate leader Phil Berger’s latest expression of disingenuous partisan posturing. So, we’ll call on the Yiddish.

Unparalleled “chutzpah” is the only way to describe his (echoed by House Speaker Tim Moore) ultimatum to Gov. Roy Cooper to “accept” Trump’s unemployment executive order or the legislature will act.

It is the height of audacity, presumptuousness and nerve to deliver an ultimatum to the governor to remedy Berger’s self-made crisis with Trump’s wholly inadequate executive orders. Trump has issued those orders, of questionable legality, while the U.S. Senate has failed to even OFFER, let alone debate and vote on a plan of its own in response to the comprehensive relief legislation the House of Representatives passed three months ago.

Here are the facts. It wasn’t Roy Cooper who enacted the stingiest unemployment benefits in the nation. Phil Berger and his allies in the General Assembly did and it was signed into law by former Gov. Pat McCrory.

Roy Cooper didn’t enact the shortest duration of unemployment benefit payments in the nation. Phil Berger and his followers in the General Assembly did -- with the giddy backing of the state Chamber of Commerce.

So, before most workers in the nation, North Carolina’s unemployed are facing even more dire financial predicaments.

Instead of issuing ultimatums to the governor, Berger should be apologizing to the 854,000 workers who are out of jobs, have been receiving unemployment benefits and are desperate to figure out how to keep a roof over their families’ heads and struggling to put food on the dinner table.

Instead of pointless political posturing, he should be pledging to reform the unemployment system he created to provide benefits that at least match the national average – in addition to continuing the special $600-a-week pandemic payment, pending federal adoption.

In 2013, Berger had a choice. North Carolina, like the rest of the nation, was climbing out of the depths of the Great Recession. The state (along with others) borrowed from the federal government for their unemployment trust funds.

Instead of maintaining the unemployment taxes businesses paid at the current rate to pay off the debt to the federal government, Berger and his allies – including the N.C. Chamber -- devised a scheme that would both cut the unemployment tax and pay the feds by slashing unemployed worker benefits.

The maximum weekly payment went from $535 to $350. The average weekly payment went to $265. – among the lowest in the nation.

The duration of benefits payments went from 26 weeks in 2012 to an adjustable cap of as few as 12 weeks in 2016 – the shortest period in the nation.

The state Chamber should now demand Berger back an unemployment system that, at a minimum, has unemployment benefits meeting the national average and extend to the same period as other states (26 weeks, plus the 13 weeks added in the stimulus package).

They should also include self-employed and independent contractors and workers previously not eligible for unemployment benefits (but now covered by the COVID-19 stimulus packages passed in March).

That, of course, does not include the special pandemic benefits which the federal government should extend through at least the end of June 2021 – including the $600-a-week supplement along with the 13 week federally-funded extension of benefits.

There’d be no shortage of adequate words to describe that kind of action. Needed, just, deserved, compassionate and considerate. It is time to put those kinds of words into action.