Under the Obama stimulus package, states that elect to expand their programs in certain ways receive federal funds to finance these changes for at least two to three years. States can make unemployment benefits more available in a number of ways:
* Changing the base period used to determine whether a worker qualifies for benefits and if so, the amount he or she will receive.
* Making unemployment insurance available to certain individuals who are seeking only part-time work and/or to those who lost or left their jobs due to certain compelling family reasons (for example, domestic violence or a spouse relocating).
* Providing an additional 26 weeks of compensation to workers who have exhausted regular unemployment benefits and are enrolled in and making satisfactory progress in certain training programs.
* Paying an additional dependents’ allowance of at least $15 per dependent per week to eligible beneficiaries.
Another potential reform relates to the extension of benefits beyond the regular 13- to 26-week period. States are required to offer extended benefits during periods of especially high unemployment (with half the cost covered by the federal government) only if certain trigger requirements are met-and that does not happen often. The ARRA offers states the option of adopting a new, less stringent trigger requirement. As of mid-July, 29 of the 30 states adopting the new trigger requirements have had extended benefits go into effect, compared with only six of the 20 states that have kept earlier triggers. Last year Congress authorized a separate program, Emergency Unemployment Compensation, to provide federally funded benefits after regular benefits are exhausted. The National Employment Law Project estimated that about 1.2 million workers would exhaust their benefits under this program before July 2009 and so become eligible for extended benefits.
I disagree with a couple of these suggestions. I don't think "quits," except in the most extreme cases involving incidents that happen on the job, should EVER be covered by UI. In other words, the rules should stay the same in this regard. If quits are included, everybody would quit their jobs using relocation and other such stuff as excuses.
Dependent allowances are nonsense. Why should a household with two people, one of whom is employed and the other not, get an allowance for dependents? They already have tax benefits. Same with single-parent families. They already have benefits in the tax system.
More important, why doesn't the author talk about repealing the law, passed during the Reagan years, which requires UI to be taxable? That would help one hell of a lot.
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