Doug Burton: Restore some unemployment benefits

Regarding the May 6 news article “State pays off $2.8 billion unemployment debt a year early”: The previous North Carolina unemployment program by anyone’s reasonable standards was broken, being $2.5 billion in the red and heading higher. Ignoring was no longer an option, and the fix required did not suit all but got the job done.

It was paid for not only by the employees in North Carolina but also employers. The $21 additional federal tax assessed per employee cited was not the only fee employers paid (and would have taken decades to pay off at that rate). My company’s rate paid to the state unemployment fund annually this year is 6.91 percent of the first $21,700 earned of every employee ($1,500 per employee).

I do think the cuts to unemployment paid by the state to those out of work were too drastic and need to be addressed now that the deficit has been erased and the employers’ rate lessened as well.

Avoiding the issue was not a prudent option, and I commend the legislature for addressing, fixing and hopefully now tweaking the issue.

This story was originally published May 11, 2015 at 5:13 PM with the headline "Doug Burton: Restore some unemployment benefits."