California state lawmakers are considering a plan to continue a weekly $ 600 unemployment benefit for state residents if Congress does not extend emergency funding this month.
“We have millions of Californians who are on a financial precipice,” said Phil Ting, a Democratic state legislator from San Francisco. “They really need that money to pay the rent, buy food, pay the daily living expenses.”
Cuts in federal emergency aid would likely put more California residents at risk of losing their homes, and could worsen California’s homeless crisis, Ting said.
“The number one way to prevent the spread of Covid is to keep people in their homes,” he said.
As coronavirus cases increase, and the number of confirmed deaths across the country reaches 150,000, Congress is debating whether to extend a weekly payment of $ 600 to supplement state unemployment benefits. In California, those benefits average just over $ 300 per week. The additional federal dollars, experts say, are providing critical assistance to millions of Americans who have lost their jobs.
But the additional payment, approved as a temporary emergency measure in March, is due this month.
Republicans in Congress have proposed reducing the additional federal benefit to $ 200 per week, arguing that providing Americans with more emergency support is discouraging them from returning to work. Democratic leaders in Congress called the Republican plan “totally inadequate,” as well as “hard-hearted” and “cruel.” House Democrats passed a bill that would extend full payments of $ 600 through January.
“We are not close to a deal,” said Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, after a meeting with Democrats on Wednesday, which means the additional federal unemployment insurance program will expire on Friday, Politico reported. Due to how the original legislation was drafted, the additional emergency payments actually ended a week earlier.
Democratic state legislators in California announced Tuesday that they are discussing how to step in to continue the full $ 600 payments for California residents if Congress does not approve them, as part of the broader economic stimulus plan proposed by state Democrats in California. $ 100 billion.
California must “do everything possible to keep people home and shelter and keep them on their own feet,” said Ting, the San Francisco state legislator. “If we don’t do that, people can end up on the street and then become homeless, and they will use other state programs.”
California is “the fifth largest economy in the world, and this is the time when we need to take advantage of all our financial resources to help people overcome this pandemic,” said Ting.
The discussions are still preliminary, and the action California legislators could take depends on what Congress passes, he said. If the federal government provides $ 200 a week, for example, California lawmakers could choose to fund an additional $ 400 a week to make up for the gap.
Additional unemployment payments from the California pandemic would likely be paid with a combination of federal government loans and a tax voucher program, which is essentially “borrowing from taxpayers,” Ting said.
California is currently one of the national hot spots for coronavirus infections, with a total of nearly 500,000 cases. New York went through the highest statewide total of confirmed coronavirus cases in early July, though it has seen far fewer deaths, with just 8,518 as of July 27.
.
