Republican leaders left North Carolina’s unemployed to twist in the wind after rejecting federal jobless benefits and enacting draconian cuts.
North Carolina has just become the first state in the country to disqualify itself from federal unemployment benefits. This was originally adopted as part of what Republicans in the state assembly have been arguing is a package designed to repay more than $2 billion in public debt.?Talking Points Memo reports that cuts to the state’s weekly jobless benefits payments are actually so severe as to disqualify it from receiving federal jobless benefits. North Carolina is one of the least prepared states in the country for this harsh reality of conservative austerity, as it already boasts the fifth highest jobless rate in the country.
Republican leaders in the state legislature went ahead with the draconian cuts after applying for an exception to the federal law that ended up disqualifying the state from receiving benefits. According to Talking Points Memo, ?North Carolina’s request was never acted upon.? Other states that have applied for and successfully received exceptions to the law include Pennsylvania, Indiana, Arkansas, and Rhode Island. This left North Carolina with the shameful recognition of being the state with the most vulnerable unemployed underclass in the country.
The projected impact of the benefit cuts in the state is sobering -?170,000 unemployed North Carolinians will lose an estimated $700 million?collectively.?That’s barely even a quarter of the $2.5 billion that the state owes, and if this is any indication of future policy, less than a quarter of what North Carolina’s jobless will have to give up to pay the state’s debt to the federal government. The individual terms are even more shocking: unemployed citizens in North Carolina will see their?maximum?weekly job benefits?drop from $535 to $350 – a 35% decrease. The amount of time one can receive those benefits will also plummet in the state, from 26 weeks, to an arbitrary range of 12 to 20 weeks.
Despite the request supposedly ?never being acted upon?, Republicans in the state definitely made this as political an issue as possible. As far back as January 16 of this year, Republicans were already blasting Democrats in the state for inaction on unemployment benefits despite the fact that Republicans control North Carolina’s government. North Carolina’s Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger was already consistently attacking Democratic U.S. Senator Kay Hagan for not seeking an exemption for the state’s jobless program, even though by all indications a request was filed earlier this year. Other member’s of North Carolina’s State Assembly and Senate had clearly asked other lawmakers from the state to act on the request as well, but Mr. Berger singled out Hagan for criticism ?since the unemployment changes in the fiscal cliff bill originated in the U.S. Senate, which is controlled by Democrats,? according to local North Carolina news station WRAL.
Coincidentally, Mr. Berger announced in March that he plans to run against Hagan for her Senate seat. What’s more, according to the Raleigh News Observer, Berger ?offered little when asked the same question this year.?
And here’s where the unanswered questions start piling up. If the state did in fact apply for an exception to the federal unemployment law, and most sources seem to agree that it did, then Mr. Berger, as the President Pro Tem of the Senate, would surely have known about it. If the entire Senate wasn’t updated continuously on the state of the application, surely Senate leadership must have been, and surely Mr. Berger would be considered a member of Senate leadership. And if the state had contacted multiple lawmakers on the application, then in order for the developing conventional narrative that the request simply ?wasn’t acted upon? to hold true,?every single one?of those lawmakers would have had to somehow forget to file the paperwork, or worse, blow off the application entirely. Somehow, that doesn’t seem very likely.
Moreover, North Carolina lawmakers knew exactly what the consequences of their actions would be before they took them. ?A report??put out before the state budget was passed showed exactly what would happen if North Carolina’s jobless benefits program went forward in its current form, which it did. ?A worker who would qualify for the maximum benefit amount under the current formula would see his weekly benefits reduced by $175,? the report clearly stated. ?If that worker were out of work for the average duration of unemployment, 16 weeks, he would have $2800 less in funds to pay bills and make ends meet.? The report, published by the North Carolina justice center, shows unequivocally the consequences of cutting jobless benefits in the state, and it’s almost certain North Carolina Republicans saw it.
One might be tempted to look at this story and casually conclude that this was the result of a mistake, that the state assembly underestimated the effects of these cuts, and that they expected the federal government to grant their exception and allow them to move forward like other states. But even the few facts that have been revealed about this story so far completely contradict that naive narrative. It seems now that what really happened is very different. It seems now that what really happened is that North Carolina Republicans saw an opportunity to gut the state’s unemployment program and improve the chances of their Senate candidate at once, and they took it.
Edited and published by WP.
