Trump ordered $400 unemployment-pay boost. Here’s what we know about impact on Idahoans
President Donald Trump announced a plan to pay $400 a week in extra unemployment compensation to workers who lost their jobs over the coronavirus pandemic. But how soon jobless Idahoans could receive the money is anybody’s guess.
Both Gov. Brad Little and Labor Department Director Jani Revier declined, through their spokespeople, requests from the Idaho Statesman for interviews about what Trump’s executive order means for Idaho.
That matters, because unemployment compensation is administered by the states using state taxes collected from employers, even when Congress supplements that money with federal cash, as it did when it passed a pair of emergency relief bills in March. States struggled to accommodate Congress’s programs.
Idaho was among the slowest states in the nation to begin making payments under those programs, the biggest of which was a $600 weekly supplement to state jobless pay. Idaho started making the $600 payments on April 24, beating only Connecticut, Wisconsin and Puerto Rico, according to a May 7 table prepared by the National Association of State Workforce Agencies.
And even then, tens of thousands of Idahoans were kept waiting for additional weeks or months, because the state wasn’t able to process their claims promptly.
It wasn’t known Monday if Little had an inkling that Trump’s plan was coming, much less any idea how to carry it out. The Idaho Department of Labor, which administers unemployment compensation, said it was not aware of Trump’s order before he signed it Saturday.
The $600 payments ended July 25. Their expiration has left millions of Americans with only state unemployment compensation, which generally pays less than half of a laid-off worker’s wages — in Idaho, the average is 41%. The average Idaho recipient had been receiving $866 per week, but now is getting $266.
Trump blamed Democrats for forcing him to resort to an executive order to keep supplemental unemployment pay flowing. The Democratic-controlled House passed a bill in May that would have kept the $600 payments in place through the end of the year, but Republicans thought $600 was too much.
Little previously blamed Congress for saddling the states with the new programs. He told the Statesman in late July that he would ask Idaho’s congressional delegation to make sure Congress did not create yet another program for Idaho officials to figure out. “Don’t saddle us with another one of those,” he said.
But a new program seems to be just what Trump ordered.
He proposed the additional $400 per week, two-thirds as much as the previous supplement but twice as much as some Republicans had proposed. Unlike the $600 payments, the $400 would not be all federal money. States would have to cough up $100.
That’s because Trump is paying for the federal $300 share by tapping $44 billion of the $70 billion he said is available in funds that Congress previously appropriated for disaster relief. Under federal law, those funds, usually reserves for hurricanes, wildfires and such, require a 25% state match.
Can Idaho provide its match, and can it get the money out fast? Those are key questions for which Little’s administration offered no answers Monday — though Little said in a Tuesday radio interview that he can tap federal coronavirus-relief funds to pay the state’s share.
Little’s press secretary, Marissa Morrison Hyer, said Little’s office is examining the executive order before determining the best path forward.
She had kind words for Trump. “Gov. Little is appreciative of the president’s efforts to help the citizens of Idaho as they continue to feel the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Morrison Hyer said by email.
The Idaho Department of Labor said it’s waiting for guidance from the U.S. Department of Labor.
“As soon as USDOL makes its guidance available, the department will consult with the governor’s office and communicate any additional details directly to claimants via email, our website and social media platforms,” spokesperson Georgia Smith said in an email.
The $400 payments would be retroactive to the week ending Aug. 1 — the week after the $600 supplements ended — and would last through Dec. 6. For now, Smith said, Idaho unemployment claimants should simply keep certifying their claims for each week they are unemployed.
And where would Idaho would get its share? A likely source is the $1.25 billion Congress handed to Idaho in March for virus-relief efforts apart from the unemployment assistance.
Little has spent only a portion of that money so far. He has suggested that any money left when the year-end deadline to spend it arrives should go into the unemployment insurance fund.
Little confirmed in a Tuesday morning interview on Boise radio station KBOI-AM (670) that he would tap the $1.25 billion. He said he thinks about $100 million is available for unemployment supplements.
He did not say how soon the state could start making the payments, nor did he raise any concerns about the state being handed a new burden. He said Trump’s order “was a move to try and get Congress to do something. It’s temporary.”
Minimum-wage workers might be left out
The jobless benefits might bypass a portion of the population that could use the money the most. Trump’s order says that only unemployed workers receiving at least $100 a week in unemployment benefits would qualify for the additional $400 a week.
That suggests that those earning Idaho’s minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, some employees who rely on tips, and some self-employed workers may not be eligible. A full-time Idaho worker earning minimum wage and working 40 hours per week receives just $72 per week in state unemployment benefits.
An estimated 6% of those receiving unemployment nationwide receive less than $100 per week, Eliza Forsythe, a labor economist at the University of Illinois tweeted Sunday.
The White House denied the program would unfairly hurt poor Americans. The $100-a-week threshold was designed to prevent fraud and ensure those receiving the federal benefit already qualified for unemployment, Judd Deere, a White House spokesperson, told The Washington Post.
“It’s utter nonsense to suggest that the Trump administration is somehow targeting poor people,” Deere said. “The president is acting where the Democrats are putting people’s futures at risk.”
Democrats have pushed to extend the weekly $600 payments. Some Republicans say $600, coupled with state benefits, gives unemployed workers an incentive to stay home.
Studies say there’s been little evidence of that in the pandemic. Yale University researchers found no evidence that high unemployment compensation rates drove job losses or slowed rehiring. Ernie Tedeschi, a former U.S. Treasury economist, found that about seven of 10 workers rehired made more on unemployment yet still returned to work.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Republican leaders to continue negotiations for a relief bill.
“Democrats repeat our call to Republicans to return to the table, meet us halfway and work together to deliver immediate relief to the American people,” Pelosi and Schumer said in a joint statement. “Lives are being lost, and time is of the essence.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Democrats kept Congress from approving a mutually agreeable bill.
“They think they have political leverage over the president of the United States, and so they’re willing to personally increase the pain for vulnerable families unless they get their way on matters not related to COVID-19,” McConnell said Monday on the Senate floor.
A beseiged state Labor Department
Like other states, Idaho has been beseiged by unemployment claims filed by workers who lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Idaho Department of Labor received nearly 150,000 initial claims for unemployment compensation in the first 12 weeks following Little’s emergency order on March 13, the day of the first coronavirus case in Idaho.
Tens of thousands of Idahoans spent hours on the phone trying to get their claims handled and ran into busy signals on the phone or didn’t hear back after submitting required online claims.
Additional workers were hired, but it took time to train them and get them working on claims. Idaho was again near the end of the pack when it rolled out another of Congress’s March mandates, making its first payments to the self-employed on May 11.
This story was updated Tuesday, Aug. 11, to add Gov. Brad Little’s comments from a Tuesday morning radio interview.
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
