Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Meadows said the proposal would not restore the $600 supplemental unemployment payments that were part of the stimulus passed in March and expired last week. He said the original unemployment benefits “actually paid people to stay at home,” and that the administration and the Republican-led Senate would not do that again.
Meadows said the plan McConnell is set to offer Monday would aim to provide 70% of the wages a worker earned before becoming unemployed, adding that the goal is “hopefully to get people back on their feet.” While he did not offer details, such a federal approach would increase state benefits so that every jobless American would get 70% of their previous pay. States now provide an average of 45% of a worker’s previous pay.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made similar comments on “Fox News Sunday.” “We want to have something which pays people about 70% wage replacement, which I think is a very fair level. So it’s not a fixed number. It’s something that pays you a percentage of your wages that are lost,” Mnuchin said.
Meadows and Mnuchin will be back on Capitol Hill on Sunday for more talks on the stimulus plan.
The 70% wage replacement option has been criticized as unworkable because many state unemployment offices work with outdated technology that would make such calculations difficult. Others, including Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have called for a transition period to any new calculation. Portman wants two months during which a flat weekly payment is made that is lower than $600.
Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer have insisted that supplemental unemployment remain at the $600-a-week level and, more broadly, have rejected a piecemeal approach to the stimulus package. “The reason we had $600 was its simplicity. And figuring out 70% of somebody’s wages—people don’t all make a salary, maybe they do—they make wages,” Pelosi said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Why don’t we just keep it simple: unemployment benefits, and the enhancement, which is so essential right now. And that’s really where we are starting,” she said.
Democrats have criticized Republicans for delaying their proposal, underscoring that the House passed a far broader, $3.5 trillion plan in May. But Pelosi said Democrats would not go into discussions with the GOP with a “red line.” “You don’t go into a resolution with a red line. You go in with your values,” she said.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and former New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley are among those who have warned of a dangerous “fiscal cliff” for the U.S. economy if unemployment compensation lapses without a replacement. “We need to maintain a very substantial fiscal impulse in the economy for quite some number of months,” Summers said Friday.