McConnell: Beshear should end extra $300 a week in unemployment insurance benefits
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell voiced disagreement Wednesday with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear for not ending the extra $300 a week in unemployment insurance benefits that has been available throughout much of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I do disagree with the governor,” McConnell said at a Wednesday news conference at Citizens Union Bank in Shelbyville after privately meeting with local officials. “I think we are now at a competitive disadvantage with every state around us except for Illinois.”
Twenty-three states — including all those surrounding Kentucky except for Illinois — have discontinued the federal bonus that is to run through September. They raise concerns that the extra money is keeping workers from applying for available jobs. Many dispute that contention, saying businesses should raise pay to entice workers.
The extra pay, made possible through the federal American Rescue Plan passed in March, is to end Sept. 6,
Beshear said Tuesday that ending the extended unemployment benefit would slow consumer spending, lead to a slower economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and could hurt people who need the money to feed their families.
“Some folks want to look only at this idea that there may be some who are staying home because of this money,” said the Democratic governor. “But they would cut this program for people who don’t have childcare ... they’re not thinking about the folks that need school to be in the place that I know it’s going to be in the fall. They’re not looking at people whose jobs may no longer exist.”
McConnell, a Louisville Republican, said the difficulty in getting people back to work is one of the biggest concerns emerging from the pandemic.
He said every business person he has met with in recent days, including hospital employers, has encountered problems in getting people back to work. “They all believe that it is related to this excess bonus,” he said. “The coronavirus is behind us. We need to get back to work. We need to do things productively and I do disagree with the governor’s decision.”
Infrastructure deal?
On another subject, McConnell said he hopes a bipartisan agreement can be reached on the White House’s big investment proposal on infrastructure.
McConnell said he had talked earlier in the day with West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the top Republican negotiator on infrastructure who was to meet Wednesday with President Biden.
The administration’s deadline for a deal is June 7. Biden initially proposed spending $2.3 trillion but has lowered that to $1.7 trillion, and called for raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent to pay for it.
Republicans have proposed a $928 billion deal and using unspent COVID-19 funds to pay for it.
McConnell also answered questions about several other topics.
▪ He defended his opposition to a bipartisan proposal to investigate independently the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
McConnell said what needs to be determined is “the best way, first of all, to punish those who were involved in it and second, to make sure this never happens again.”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has assured him that the Justice Department is aggressively pursuing those involved in the insurrection, “so nobody is going to get away with anything,” said McConnell.
He also said two Senate committees are coming up with plans to prevent a repeat. “That is the key to going forward. Another layer of investigation, in my view, doesn’t add anything. We were all witnesses to it. I was there. We all know exactly what happened. I don’t think we would learn anything further by yet having another level of investigation.”
▪ McConnell said he does not think any of the voting changes in various states are designed to suppress the vote based on race.
He said Democrats are trying to convince the Senate that states are involved in trying to prevent people from voting in order to pass a total federal takeover of elections.
▪ He said he has no opinion on a prefiled bill in the Kentucky General Assembly by Rep. Joe Fischer, R-Fort Thomas, to limit teaching about systemic racism in Kentucky public school classrooms. In general, McConnell said the government should not dictate what is taught in schools.
He said he is concerned about efforts to try to downplay significant events in American history like the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 and the enacting of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 that prohibited racial discrimination in voting.
McConnell drew criticism last month when he said he did not think 1619 is one of the most important points in U.S. history. That is when the first enslaved Africans were brought to and sold in the Virginia colony, beginning American slavery.
The New York Times began an initiative in 2019 called The 1619 Project. Its goal is to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”
This story was originally published June 2, 2021 at 4:03 PM.
