ANOTHER VIEWPOINT: Get real, Congress, extend benefits

<p>Miami Herald</p><p>Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says that he hasn’t been following the debate in Washington over whether to extend federal unemployment benefits to jobless Americans.</p><p>That’s OK, we have.</p><p>The Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation is set to expire after this week, taking the $600 weekly payments to jobless Americans with it. If reluctant Republican lawmakers in Congress care at all about keeping the U.S. economy buoyed while COVID-19 continues to surge, they will extend the benefits to the many people who were gainfully employed, then suddenly jobless, then employed again and now are out of work one more time. As the increase in confirmed cases of the coronavirus shows, too many states, Florida, first and foremost, bungled reopening, doing it too early and without the proper hard-nosed mandates requiring everyone to take responsibility for staying safe.</p><p>$600 too much?</p><p>Unfortunately, the possibility that the unemployed might use this princely sum of $600 a week — $2,400 a month — to put off looking for a job, is these lawmakers’ primary concern. Not their inability to feed hungry families, not their inability to pay the rent or buy medication, but not aggressively looking for a job at a time when so many types of businesses still are shut down and, therefore, not hiring. Yes, a few states with higher minimum wages and that pay out more in unemployment benefits for a longer period of time might make the temporary federal benefit seem like a relative bonus. Arizona, Kansas and Montana are among such states.</p><p>Florida, it goes without saying, is not.</p><p>But even as DeSantis tries to dodge this debate so as not to be out of step with his mentor, President Trump, he almost seems to be making the case for continued federal benefits:</p><p>“I think people should understand that it’s not necessarily just a question of whether you want to work or not, it’s a question of whether all the jobs are going to be there,” he said. “Some of those folks who were laid off, they may not have the ability to go back to some of these jobs.”</p><p>Extend benefits.</p><p>Substitute “congressional lawmakers” for “people” and it’s clear that not only should federal benefits be extended. Republican lawmakers, now talking about an across-the-board cut to the $600 weekly payout, should, instead thoughtfully calibrate the benefits so as not to punish those people in low minimum-wage states with low unemployment benefits given for a shorter period of time. Again, Florida can take a bow here.</p><p>These are extraordinary times. Americans are up against challenges that, in many cases, government mismanagement exacerbated.</p><p>No one’s getting rich on temporary unemployment. Republican lawmakers should agree to extend it, without penalizing recipients, and stop showing contempt for working — and non-working — Americans.</p>