Florida's GOP Governor Shoots Down Trump's Plan To Extend Unemployment Benefits: 'Not An Option'
'Florida’s GOP governor shoots down Trump’s plan to extend unemployment benefits: ‘That’s not an option.’ By Cody Fenwick, Aug. 11, 2020, Alternet.
Even a close ally of the president, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, admitted on Tuesday that he can’t make the White House’s plan to extend boosted unemployment insurance benefits work in his state.
When Congress passed the CARES Act in March, it provided people who became unemployed during the pandemic to receive an additional $600 per week on top of the amount their states would typically provide, which is usually a fraction of what their salary had been. And though Democrats passed a bill through the House to extend these benefits past the end of July and into 2021, the Republicans in the Senate dithered and only began working on the problem in the weeks before the program expired.
They passed nothing, the program expired, and Trump issued a series of executive actions that were supposedly designed to extend the benefits at $400 a week going forward and take other steps to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus. But it was quickly pointed out that there was much less to Trump’s acts than he had promised. As DeSantis told reporters Tuesday, the plan to boost unemployment insurance in Florida can’t get off the ground. “That’s not an option for us in Florida, because those CARES Act dollars are obligated already,” DeSantis said, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The newspaper explained:
-- Trump’s idea is to allow the state to spend emergency pandemic and natural disaster funds to increase benefits by $400 per month. The emergency CARES Act dollars that Trump said would pay for the unemployment relief in his plan have already been assigned to pandemic-related expenses, DeSantis said. --
The state has more than $5 billion in CARES Act dollars that haven’t been spent, but DeSantis said the money would not be used on unemployment benefits. “They haven’t been quote, ‘spent,’ but it’s $4 plus billion that’s been obligated, so we’ve got to do that,” DeSantis said. The Times also noted that Florida’s base-level benefits are among the “stingiest in the nation,” with recipients getting a maximum of $275 a week. It’s not just DeSantis that’s running into trouble with Trump’s plan.
The Hill reported that governors around the country were upset with the president’s effort because it pushes them to cover 25 percent of the cost of the boosted unemployment:...
Read More, https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/floridas-gop-governor-shoots-down-trumps-plan-to-extend-unemployment-benefits-thats-not-an-option/
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