«The damage from a lapse in unemployment benefits will radiate throughout the economy,» tweeted Rep. Don Beyer.
A Republican proposal to pare back enhanced unemployment benefits to about 70% of what a worker earned prior to losing their job — as opposed to the previous weekly payment of $600 across the board — would take most states between two to five months to implement, likely causing delays in relief for tens of millions of people.
That’s according to amemo(pdf) presented to Congress last week by the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA), an organization representing state agencies that administer unemployment benefits and other programs.
The memo,obtainedbyNPRover the weekend, warned that replacing the flat weekly payment with a more complicated individualized benefit based on prior income “would take 8 to 20 weeks or more” for most states to fully implement, depending on the formula the White House and GOP ultimately propose.
Such an implementation delay “could mean a huge gap in payments and a bigger backlog for millions,”notedNPRcorrespondent Kelsey Snell.
AsNPRreported Saturday, “the potential delays are so significant that the U. S. Department of Labor told Congress in May that it ‘strongly’ opposed such a change because states would find it ‘exceedingly difficult if not impossible to implement.’”
The Labor Department, according to a document obtained byNPR, told the House Ways and Means Committee that “states would find it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible to implement a unique payment amount in addition to the various benefit payments to which the [Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation] applies.
