Extra unemployment benefits may arrive

There may be more unemployment benefits as Democrats and the Biden administration seek a $ 1.9 trillion pandemic aid package.

The legislation would increase the amount of unemployment benefits workers receive per week and extend them for several months.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, expects a bill to be signed into law in mid-March. Democrats intend to pass legislation through a budget measure that would not require Republican support.

The exact amount and duration of benefits are somewhat uncertain.

It seems likely, based on several proposals, that Democrats will increase profits by at least $ 400 a week and extend them to at least August, according to labor experts.

The additional benefits offered by the $ 900 billion aid package signed by former President Donald Trump in late December are expected to end after mid-March for some workers and after April 11 for others. If there were no more relief, 11 million unemployed workers would lose their income.

President Joe Biden proposed increasing the unemployment benefit by $ 400 a week, which meant a total payment of about $ 739 a week for the average worker, according to Department of Labor data. It would also extend benefits until September.

A draft proposal issued by the House Ways and Means Committee this week largely reflects Biden’s plan. Still, the profits would end on August 29th.

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The $ 400 weekly grant would begin after March 14, according to the House proposal. It would basically recover when the current $ 300 weekly supplement ends, meaning there would be no retroactive payments at the beginning of the year.

Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is pushing for a grant of more than $ 600 a week.

“I’m going to fight like hell to get six,” Wyden said this week.

Republicans have been firmly opposed to improving the $ 600 weekly profit since the early days of the pandemic. The CARES Act offered a $ 600 supplement for about four months through July.

The greater benefits would prevent people from returning to work, they argued, thus increasing the unemployment rate and slowing the economic recovery.

Many studies found that the $ 600 supplement did not cause this to happen globally during the spring and summer. In fact, employment probably increased during that time period, according to a paper released Wednesday by economists at the University of Chicago.

The economy has improved since then, which means that increased profits can create a greater disincentive for workers not to return to work, according to some economists.

“I think there are good reasons to think that the deterrent effect will be greater in 2021 than in 2020,” said Peter Ganong, an economist and assistant professor at the University of Chicago.

“But I absolutely believe there should be [another unemployment supplement] in 2021, “he added, due to continued distress in the labor market. The benefits should disappear as more Americans are vaccinated,” he said.

Democrats don’t necessarily need Republican votes in favor of a stimulus package, as they seek to pass it with a budget maneuver called reconciliation, which only requires a simple majority vote to succeed.

This plan may be complicated by the intention of House Democrats to add a federal minimum wage of $ 15 per hour to the relief package. Senator Joe Manchin, DW.V., has been opposed to this proposal and a Democratic deserter could sink the bill’s possibilities.

“Believing the Senate to swallow this is a little more of a problem,” said Wayne Vroman, a labor economist at the Urban Institute, a left-wing think tank.

Congress should be wrong to extend the benefits for a longer period than a shorter one, he said, to avoid the need for another potential extension.

“Whatever the end point, trying to get Conservative Democrats to accompany even more stimuli will, I think, be a lot harder than it seems to be this time around,” Vroman said.

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