Excerpted from Michael Cooper of The New York Times, “Michigan Cuts Jobless Benefit by 6 Weeks,”
Michigan, whose unemployment rate has topped 10 percent longer than that of any other state, is about to set another record: its new Republican governor, Rick Snyder, signed a law Monday that will lead the state to pay fewer weeks of unemployment benefits next year than any other state.
It’s not easy to figure out a fair way to describe a policy reaction so grossly unfair, and so inarguably unwise.
It’s cruel in the first instance to the families who lose those benefits, a distinct an identifiable group; the following wave of suffering is distributed across everyone else in Michigan who has to worry about car payments, uninsured medical bills, a mortgage – – which is to say most of the population except the very fortunate — who may, and can afford to, view this as as a social experiment whose outcome, it is hoped, will prove John Maynard Keynes wrong: don’t help the unemployed, it just makes them lazier.
Mr. Cooper of the Time also caught some other interesting details. Our emphasis is red/bold.
Democrats and advocates for the unemployed expressed outrage that a such a hard-hit state will become the most miserly when it comes to how long it pays benefits to those who have lost their jobs. All states currently pay 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, before extended benefits paid by the federal government kick in. Michigan’s new law means that starting next year, when the federal benefits are now set to end, the state will stop paying benefits to the jobless after just 20 weeks. The shape of future extensions is unclear.
The measure, passed by a Republican-led Legislature, took advocates for the unemployed by surprise: the language cutting benefits next year was slipped quietly into a bill that was originally sold as way to preserve unemployment benefits this year.
The original bill was aimed at reducing unemployment fraud and making a technical change so the state’s current long-term unemployed could continue receiving extended unemployment benefits from the federal government for up to 99 weeks — benefits that would have been phased out next week without a change in the state law to make the unemployed in the state eligible to continue receiving benefits. Republican lawmakers amended it to cut the length of benefits starting in January.
Mr. Snyder issued a statement after signing the bill trumpeting the fact that it would preserve the extended benefits this year — and making no mention of the fact that it would cut state benefits beginning next year. “Snyder Signs Bill to Protect Unemployed,” was the headline of the news release that his office sent out. “Now that we have continued this safety net, we must renew our focus on improving Michigan’s economic climate,” he said in the statement.
Sara Wurfel, a spokeswoman for Mr. Snyder, said in an e-mail that he signed the bill because 35,000 Michiganders would have lost their extended benefits this week, and an additional 150,000 would have lost them by year’s end, if the state’s law had not been altered. She said that about 250,000 people collected more than 20 weeks of benefits in 2010.
Advocates for the unemployed called it a bad trade. “We have a temporary change to help some jobless workers that is imposing an indefinite or permanent cost on future jobless workers,” said Rick McHugh, a staff lawyer for the National Employment Law Project, which opposed the law. “And that does seem doubly unfair when the temporary help for current jobless workers is almost totally paid for by the federal government.”
Michigan Cuts Jobless Benefit by 6 Weeks – NYTimes.com.By Michael Cooper,a s noted above dated March 28th, 2011
What in our view makes this piece particularly disturbing is that Governor Snyder’s pres statement – headed “Snyder Signs Bill to Protect Unemployed,” not be a lie. It may be what West Point cadets refer to as “quibbling.” And it certainly seems country mile away from “telling the truth.”