NC moving to accept new unemployment benefits offered by Trump, Cooper says
People out of work in North Carolina because of coronavirus — or any other reason — stopped receiving extra federal unemployment benefits about two weeks ago.
But that could change soon. Gov. Roy Cooper said Wednesday he has begun the process to apply for a new program created by Republican President Donald Trump. Trump’s plan will take FEMA disaster relief money and redirect it to unemployment benefits.
It would give unemployed people $400 a week. The previous federal benefits of $600 a week stopped earlier this month, after Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to negotiate a deal to keep it going.
For North Carolinians to get the new money will require bipartisan cooperation between Cooper, a Democrat who is in charge of the state’s application, and the Republican-led legislature, which may need to help pay for North Carolina’s 25% share of Trump’s plan.
And even though both sides appear committed to making it happen, it hasn’t gone down without some partisan sniping.
Cooper had previously signaled some unease with Trump’s plan to take disaster relief money, leading Republican lawmakers to criticize him for not more eagerly embracing a way to get extra money to people who have lost their jobs.
“It doesn’t make sense that Gov. Cooper would object to this federal unemployment assistance offer,” said Republican Sen. Harry Brown of Jacksonville, a top state budget writer, in a press release Tuesday. “He’s already accepted almost identical assistance after previous disasters, and there’s no question we’re in a disaster right now — he himself declared the disaster in March.”
On Wednesday, Cooper replied that he had indeed started applying for the federal money. But he said it would be better if Congress would act instead of Trump — since Congress could approve a plan that spends new money, instead of taking it from FEMA. Cooper also said the federal unemployment benefits should go back to being $600 a week instead of being lowered to $400, and that Republican lawmakers in North Carolina should also expand the state’s benefits.
North Carolina has among the lowest unemployment benefits in the nation, after GOP-backed cuts in 2013. Those cuts turned a multi-billion-dollar deficit in the unemployment program following the Great Recession into a multi-billion-dollar surplus. Cooper said they should use it now.
“While I appreciate your new-found interest in helping people who are unemployed through no fault of their own, you as legislators should do more,” Cooper wrote in a letter to the top legislative Republican leaders, Sen. Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, on Wednesday after they pressured him Tuesday to accept Trump’s new offer.
Most states in the country let people receive unemployment for up to 26 weeks, but North Carolina caps it at 12 weeks in most circumstances. Cooper said the legislature should raise the cap to 24 weeks, and also raise the maximum amount people can make each week from $350 to $500.
Earlier this summer the legislature did briefly consider a much less sweeping increase to unemployment benefits, but it was never approved.
“North Carolina has among the worst state unemployment benefits in the country but you have failed to remedy that in the middle of this pandemic,” Cooper wrote.
How to pay for the benefits
Cooper spokeswoman Dory MacMillan had questioned Trump’s plan earlier this week, telling The News & Observer on Monday that, “Depleting money set aside for natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes is a bad way to help the unemployed, especially when forecasters predict high hurricane activity.”
But later that day White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said there would be safeguards in place to make sure the funding for other natural disaster relief did not get too low.
On Tuesday, Republican lawmakers here said that meant there would only be a set amount of money put aside for Trump’s unemployment deal — so Cooper needed to act quickly, to make sure other states didn’t beat North Carolina to the punch.
They also promised to pay for the state’s share of the funding, which could reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The legislature is not in session right now but will return in early September, at which point Berger and Moore said lawmakers “will vote” to appropriate whatever money is needed.
“Because of smart budgeting decisions, North Carolina is one of the best-prepared states in the country to handle this recession ... while liberal states with oppressive tax-and-spend policies, like New York, cannot,” Berger and Moore said in a joint statement.
Billions of dollars for unemployment
While the general state budget is facing a squeeze this year because of tax revenue losses due to COVID-19 shutdowns, a separate fund specifically for unemployment has close to $3 billion in surplus, they said — plus the state has over $500 million in money from the federal coronavirus relief package earlier this spring that still hasn’t been spent.
In his letter, Cooper asked lawmakers to pay for the new federal benefits out of the unemployment surplus, and save the stimulus money for other purposes.
Since March — as unemployment claims have smashed previous records set during the Great Recession a decade ago — North Carolinians have been paid close to $7 billion in unemployment checks.
Between March 15 and Aug. 11, the state paid out around $1.6 billion in benefits. The federal benefits added another $5.3 billion until they stopped on Aug. 1. Those federal benefits were so much higher because they were not only nearly double the maximum North Carolina pays ($600 a week compared to $350) but also applied to more types of job losses, like for people who were gig workers or self-employed.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published August 12, 2020 at 2:59 PM with the headline "NC moving to accept new unemployment benefits offered by Trump, Cooper says."
