Gov. Mike Parson, playing the Republican Party’s national playbook, is cancelling federal unemployment benefits in mid-June. His decision will send thousands of Missourians back into poverty. (Parson’s action will end all of the COVID-19 programs, including the $300 additional weekly unemployment payment that was added to regular state unemployment programs.) The extra 13 weeks of income, in addition to the usual $20 given by the state, will also end.
The governor echoed other red state governors with his comment that, “Many business owners and employers across the state are still struggling. Not because of COVID-19, but because they can’t find people to fill the jobs. Continuing these programs only worsens the workplace issues we’re currently facing.” He didn’t add that they can find workers at the wages they are willing to pay.
“Stopping unemployment benefits just to force Missourians into jobs without a living wage will only increase the burden of poverty on our working families.”
-St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones
Missouri has an unemployment rate of 4.2 percent. So it’s obvious that what the business community in this state wants—and what a growing list of Republican governors in Alabama, Arkansas, Montana, South Carolina, Idaho and Tennessee have already done—is giving the workers who will work the substandard wages they received before the pandemic.
Minority House Leader Crystal Quade rightly responded to the governor’s action, “The notion that Missourians are refusing to work so they can temporarily collect $300 a week is an offensive right-wing myth.” According to the Kansas City Star, “the Missouri minimum wage is $412 a week. That’s below the poverty line for a three-person family. The maximum benefit in Missouri is $320 a week. To that, Washington added $300 a week in expanded unemployment benefits through early September. The combined benefit is enough to move the family of three out of poverty, if only for a few months.”
We agree with U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who said last Sunday that nothing in the data suggests that enhanced unemployment checks are the reason people are out of work. Moreover, a Yale University study confirms that expanding unemployment did not dissuade people from seeking work.
“If you’re having trouble hiring people – pay more.”
-Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas
Judy Conti, government affairs director of the National Employment Law Project, said that ending the additional federal unemployment benefit is, “ill informed and cruel. It’s still going to take awhile to get people back to work. When you choke off money from the unemployed, you’re only going to slow the recovery.”
What is missing fundamentally in this policy debate is the fact that working people should have a living wage. But just as importantly, these Republican governors are supporting a policy that is inherently “cruel and unjust.”
