Davis Opening Statement at Worker and Family Support Subcommittee Hearing
(As prepared for delivery)
Unemployment insurance is an earned benefit to assist workers who lost their jobs through no fault of their own, helping workers pay the rent and put food on the table while stabilizing our local and national economies.
During the pandemic, 22 million – or about one in four - American workers received unemployment benefits. Unemployment benefits kept 5 million people out of poverty, and helped prevent the long, deep recession predicted by economists. The Biden American Rescue Plan’s extended unemployment benefits and other investments resulted in record-breaking job growth and the longest stretch of low unemployment since the 1960s.
However, the pandemic highlighted much work remains to make the unemployment insurance program fair and effective. Millions of workers spent hours, or days, trying to access and complete the unemployment benefit application, and many never succeeded. People of color, younger workers, and lower-paid workers were disproportionately less likely to know they could even apply. The Government Accountability Office also notified us about a deeply-troubling and unacceptable problem – among workers who applied for benefits, white workers were more likely to receive benefits than Black workers.
Unfortunately, problems with equitable access to unemployment benefits preceded the pandemic, with many states making it difficult or near impossible for workers to claim earned unemployment benefits when they needed them. States often justified the roadblocks as fraud prevention, but the stark reality was that workers who were our friends and neighbors were locked out of benefits they earned.
The good news is that both red and blue states are now hard at work removing some of those barriers to unemployment benefits. Ways and Means Democrats worked closely with the Biden Administration to provide American Rescue Plan resources so that states could take immediate action to ensure that workers received their benefits fairly and on time while preventing fraud. The Department of Labor has funded 160 grants in 46 states to ensure basic fairness to people of all ages and races in our unemployment system. I am very proud of the good work in my home state of Illinois as well as around the country, and I look forward to hearing about these efforts from Jennifer Phillips today.
The success of the equity grants shows how much states can do with adequate resources. But we should not confuse the effects of funding shortfalls with the appropriate funding consequences states currently experience when they fail to pay benefits to unemployed workers.
The ARPA equity grants were an important first step to make sure all workers receive their earned benefits, and these grants are an investment that should continue. In addition, there are larger, structural issues to address, starting with giving the Department of Labor the data and tools it needs to protect workers.
No worker should have to fight and struggle to get their earned benefits or to pay the bills once they claim them.
The test of any unemployment reform proposal is whether we protect and enforce workers’ rights. Workers who receive unemployment benefits face less hardship and go back to work faster. They continue career paths they fought to start, and they help build a stronger economy in their local communities and across the country. I hope we can work together to make sure that happens, now and in the future.
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