Urge Congress to Extend Additional $600 Weekly Unemployment Benefit

From the Economic Policy Institute (http://www.epi.org/):

Last week’s jobs report puts our economic challenges in stark terms, with more than 20.5 million U.S. workers out of work for the month of April.

The very best thing Congress can do right now to support people and families who are out of work is to extend the additional $600 weekly unemployment benefits included in the $2 trillion CARES Act, which are set to expire at the end of July.

That extra $600 in jobless benefits has been the best response yet to the economic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Go to https://epipolicycenter.org/65447-2/ to write a letter telling Congress we must extend the additional $600 in jobless benefits for the millions of hard-hit people and families.

Some Republican Senators like Lindsey Graham have pledged to cut off these benefits to struggling families when they expire this summer. And some conservatives have insisted businesses trying to re-open can’t even find workers because potential employees “make more collecting unemployment.”

If businesses are really serious about re-opening amid the ongoing pandemic, there’s a simple fix to hiring back workers who are currently receiving boosted jobless benefits: offer wages that are high enough to entice potential workers to come to work.

As noted in this new report, policymakers could aid this effort and level out incentives in a variety of ways. Congress could pass legislation to allow laid-off workers to keep their extra $600 weekly payment, or some portion of it—even after they find a new job. We could also develop “a universal wage credit,” which would be phased out as incomes rise; this wage credit would boost workers’ pay for as long as the higher unemployment benefits are in place.

Join EPI in telling Congress to extend the additional $600 in weekly unemployment insurance. This has been the best response yet to the economic shock of the coronavirus.

The more money we can put in the hands of working people and families that are struggling to pay the bills, the faster our economic recovery will be. People aren’t putting their unemployment benefits into a savings account. Those dollars are being put directly back into our ailing economy.