- White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Sunday that the president was not interested in extending the weekly increase of $ 600 to federal unemployment benefits as they expire on July 31.
- Meadows said the $ 600 per month increase in unemployment “actually paid people to stay home” and “people made more money staying home than they would return to work.”
- The weekly increase of $ 600 was approved in March as part of the CARES Act to supplement the gap between a worker’s lost wages and state unemployment benefits, which cover only part of a person’s previous earnings.
- Meadows said the Trump administration planned to support an effort to expand unemployment insurance that would provide up to 70% of an individual’s lost wages, although state officials previously warned that such a plan would take weeks to implement.
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White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Sunday that the Trump administration was not interested in extending the current federal unemployment benefits previously instituted during the pandemic because “it paid people to stay home.”
“The original unemployment benefits were actually paying people to stay home, and many people actually got more money to stay home than they would return to work,” Meadows said during an appearance Sunday in “This Week” by ABC. “The president has been very clear, our Republican senators have been very clear, we are not going to extend that provision.”
As Business Insider’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig reported, approximately 32 million unemployed Americans could see a benefit cut of up to 75% by the end of the month if Congress doesn’t renew or replace its weekly $ 600 boost to payments unemployment. Lawmakers had instituted the push as part of the CARES Act in March to keep Americans afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, as state benefits often cover only 30% to 50% of lost wages. of a worker.
—This week (@ThisWeekABC) July 26, 2020
On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would like to negotiate a new stimulus package with Democrats “in the coming weeks,” although The Washington Post also reported Friday that internal strife within the Party. Republican had posed an obstacle to new coronavirus economic relief legislation. .
Meadows said the White House was prepared to offer a proposal Monday to help “get people back on their feet.”
“We will be prepared on Monday to provide an extension of unemployment insurance that would be 70% of the wages you had before you were unemployed,” said Meadows. Under the Trump administration system proposed last week, the average weekly federal benefits for unemployed Americans would drop to around $ 200.
The Institute for Economic Policy has estimated that 3.4 million fewer jobs will be created over the next year if unemployment benefits are reduced by $ 400.
As Business Insider previously reported, officials warned that the transition to the president’s proposed reduced benefits could take a few months to implement, although Meadows rejected that Sunday, telling Stephanopoulos that the administration planned to work with state agencies to ensure that “outdated Computer systems did not cause delays in benefits.
The discussion comes amid the continuing increase in coronavirus cases in the US According to data analyzed by Johns Hopkins University, there have been at least 4,193,103 cases of coronavirus in the US that have resulted in more than 146,000 deaths.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate was 11.1% in June, a decrease as a result of the creation of 4.8 million jobs in June.
