NC’s COVID-19 relief package is massive, but it missed the biggest needs

As a deadly virus swept across the state, infecting nearly 12,000, killing more than 400 and leaving 1 million without jobs, North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature waited a month to respond.

But the COVID-19 relief package signed by Gov. Cooper Monday fails to deliver the two things the people of this state need most right now: better unemployment benefits and health insurance for the poor.

The two-bill package allocates $1.57 billion in federal stimulus funds and provides an abundance of help in many areas, but it ignores calls to expand Medicaid and fails to increase the state’s paltry unemployment benefits at a time when claims are at a historic high.

Medicaid expansion was an unrealistic expectation with this legislature. But there is no explanation beyond callousness for the unwillingness to improve unemployment benefits that are now among the stingiest in the nation. The average state unemployment benefit in North Carolina is now $265 a week. The national average is $371.

Most of the newly unemployed also qualify for $600 in weekly federal unemployment benefits. Congress hoped that amount, when combined with state benefits, would keep most laid-off workers’ income whole while enabling them to stay safely at home. On its end, the legislature has done nothing, despite having more than $3 billion in the state’s unemployment reserve fund.

“Jobless workers need a lifeline, and the Republicans in the legislature wouldn’t help them make ends meet during the coronavirus crisis,” said state Sen. Wiley Nickel, a Wake Democrat who has pushed to improve state unemployment benefits.

Nickel sought to increase the top weekly unemployment benefit from $350 to $500, but he settled for raising it to $400, essentially an inflation adjustment since the benefit was capped in 2013.

The Senate unanimously approved a bill including the $50 increase, but in the House the increase was cut out. Also removed was a change in how benefits are calculated that would have boosted payments to most recipients.

The refusal to make the changes sends a message that Republican lawmakers don’t care about workers, no matter how great the number who have lost jobs or how desperate their circumstances.

Instead of helping the unemployed, some Republicans are thinking of doing the opposite. They are considering whether federal unemployment benefits can be cut off if service workers do not return to their previous jobs as the economy reopens. House Speaker Tim Moore said last week, “We do not need to create an incentive where you are incentivized to stay home and draw [benefits] and not go to work.”

Some workers may prefer to keep receiving the benefits rather than return to low-paying restaurant, grocery and other service jobs that put them at risk of infection. If employers want workers to take the risk, employers should pay them for it.

Seven years ago, Republican lawmakers made it harder on the unemployed under a notion that benefits sap the desire to work. That was mean-spirited then. Now, with so many jobs gone and a deep recession looming, it’s a disgrace.

North Carolina has the means to offer more help. Lawmakers should provide it.