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Mitch McConnell's Incredible Shrinking Unemployment Benefits

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has seemingly abandoned his earlier proposal to add an extra $300 per week to state and federal unemployment payments, at least according to his latest coronavirus relief proposal.

In September, McConnell introduced legislation that would have expanded weekly unemployment benefits, at least through the end of the year. It was short of the added $600 unemployed workers had received April through July, but would also have provided lump sum payments equivalent to $300 for each week that had lapsed since the more generous federal supplement expired.

On Tuesday, after a bipartisan group of lawmakers embraced that $300 increase, McConnell countered with a new short-term extension of current programs ― but no supplemental funds at all.

McConnell’s latest offer is part of a broader pandemic relief bill that he characterized on Wednesday as the product of conversations with administration officials and “reflecting what the president is ready to sign into law.” The president previously supported the $600, and after it expired, used emergency powers to give the unemployed an extra $300 in “lost wages assistance” for several weeks.

A McConnell spokesperson declined to comment on the decreased generosity between his September and December unemployment proposals.

If Congress does nothing, nearly 12 million workers will lose unemployment benefits on Dec. 26, when two more programs in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES) expire. When lawmakers created those programs in March, they thought the pandemic would be over in a few months. That clearly didn’t happen, and now we are heading into what is expected to be the worst period of the pandemic so far.

One of the new federal unemployment programs pays gig workers and others without regular payroll jobs who are ineligible for regular unemployment insurance, and the other provides an extra 13 weeks of benefits to people who run out...

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