Unemployment benefits expire for millions as Trump rages

WEST PALM BEACH: Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans struggling to make a living expired overnight when President Donald Trump refused to sign a year-end COVID-19 spending and relief bill that it had been considered a closed deal prior to his sudden objections.

The fate of the bipartisan package remained in limbo on Sunday (December 27) as Trump continued to demand larger COVID-19 relief checks and complained about “hog” spending. Without the widespread funding provided by the massive measure, a government shutdown would occur when the money runs out at 12:01 a.m. local time on Tuesday.

“It’s a game of chess and we’re pawns,” said Lanetris Haines, a self-employed single mother of three in South Bend, Indiana, who was about to lose her $ 129 weekly unemployment benefit unless Trump promulgate the package or approve it. unlikely search for changes.

Washington has been reeling since Trump approved the deal after it garnered broad approval in both houses of Congress and after the White House assured Republican leaders that Trump would support it.

Instead, he attacked the bill’s plan to provide $ 600 COVID-19 relief checks to most Americans, insisting it should be for $ 2,000. House Republicans quickly rejected that idea during a rare Christmas Eve session. But Trump has not been swayed despite the nation being in the grip of a pandemic.

“I just want our great people to get $ 2,000, instead of the measly $ 600 that is now in the bill,” Trump tweeted Saturday from Palm Beach, Florida, where he will spend the holidays. “Also, stop the billions of dollars in ‘pig’.”

President-elect Joe Biden asked Trump to sign the bill immediately as the Saturday midnight deadline for two federal programs that provide unemployment assistance approached.

LEE: Americans donate to charity like never before amid the COVID-19 pandemic

“It’s the day after Christmas, and millions of families don’t know if they will be able to make ends meet due to President Donald Trump’s refusal to sign an economic relief bill passed by Congress with an overwhelming bipartisan majority,” Biden . He said in a statement that he accused Trump of an “abdication of responsibility” that has “devastating consequences.”

“I’ve been talking to people who are afraid they will be thrown out of their homes over the Christmas break, and it still could be if we don’t sign this bill,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan. Democrat.

Lauren Bauer, an economics fellow at the Brookings Institution, has estimated that 11 million people would lose aid from the programs immediately without additional aid; Millions more would exhaust other unemployment benefits in a few weeks.

Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and a senior member of the Century Foundation think tank, said the number may be closer to 14 million because unemployment has skyrocketed since Thanksgiving.

“All these people and their families will suffer if Trump doesn’t sign the damn bill,” Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Liberal Economic Policy Institute, tweeted Wednesday.

How and when people would be affected by the lapse depended on the state they lived in, the program they trusted, and when they applied for benefits. In some states, people with regular unemployment insurance would continue to receive payments under a program that extends benefits when the unemployment rate exceeds a certain threshold, Stettner said.

Around 9.5 million people, however, were dependent on the pandemic Unemployment Assistance program that fully expired on Saturday. That program made unemployment insurance available to the self-employed, gig workers, and others who were not normally eligible. After receiving their last checks, those recipients couldn’t ask for more help, Stettner said.

While payments could be received retroactively, any gap would mean more hardship and uncertainty for Americans who have already dealt with bureaucratic delays, often draining much of their savings to stay afloat while they wait for payments to begin.

They were people like Earl McCarthy, a father of four who lives in South Fulton, Georgia, and had relied on unemployment since he lost his job as a sales representative for a luxurious senior community. He said he would run out of income by the second week of January if Trump refused to sign the bill.

McCarthy said she had already used up much of her savings while waiting five months to start receiving about $ 350 a week in unemployment benefits.

“The whole experience was horrible,” McCarthy said. “I shudder to think that if I hadn’t saved anything or had an emergency fund during those five months, where would we have been?”

He added: “It will be difficult if the president does not sign this bill.”

The bill, which was in Florida awaiting Trump’s signature, would also trigger a weekly federal supplement of $ 300 for unemployment payments.

READ: Fauci says herd immunity could require ‘between 70% and 90%’ to receive the COVID-19 vaccine

Sharon Shelton Corpening hoped the extra help would allow her 83-year-old mother, with whom she lives, to stop using her social security payments to pay her $ 1,138 rent.

Corpening, which lives in the Atlanta area, had launched an independent content strategy business that was taking off before the pandemic hit, causing several of its contracts to fail.

She was getting around $ 125 a week under the pandemic unemployment program and says she wouldn’t be able to pay her bills for about a month. This, despite her temporary job for the United States Census and as a poll worker.

“We are on the edge of the abyss,” said Corpening, who is lobbying for Unemployment Action, a project launched by the Center for Popular Democracy to fight for relief. “One more month, if that. Then I run out of everything. “

In addition to unemployment benefits that have now expired, Trump’s continued refusal to sign the bill would lead to the expiration of eviction protections and suspend a new round of subsidies for worst-hit businesses, restaurants, and theaters, as well as money. for private cash transit systems and for the distribution of vaccines.

The relief was also attached to a $ 1.4 trillion government funding bill to keep the federal government running until September, meaning that failure to sign it before midnight Tuesday would lead to a federal shutdown.