News reports this past week show that the number of Floridians filing for unemployment has doubled in the past week. At the same time, Florida’s unemployment office is cutting nearly 1,000 workers from its call center, about a quarter of its representatives. And the icing on the cake is that as claims go up, benefits for out-of-work families will drop significantly as the $600 a week supplemental from the federal government expire on July 25. Of course, many Floridians are still fighting for any benefits at all. Let that all sink in for a minute.
Folks you can’t make this stuff up. Florida’s unemployment system, designed and managed by the Republican governors and legislatures, has been described as the offspring of a train wreck and a dumpster fire, and is widely recognized as a “poster child” of poor state administration. The system, amazingly, is called CONNECT.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by the failure of our unemployment system. It’s working the way it was intended to. Under former Republican governor and current Senator Rick Scott, the program was drastically changed in 2012 to slash benefits and make it harder to access. Why, you say? Because big business did not want to pay their fair share of unemployment insurance taxes. So, Scott and the business lobby pushed through one of the most draconian legislative packages seen in recent Florida history. The goal of the “reform” was simple — to forever absolve Florida’s biggest businesses from their legal tax liability by completely gutting the Unemployment Insurance system. The result would deny hundreds of thousands of workers the benefits they need through direct cuts and new complicated rules and procedures designed to keep future unemployed workers from ever qualifying for benefits at all.
So that’s the system we have today in the middle of a pandemic. With benefits that are among the cheapest and shortest-lasting in America, capping out at $275 a week and currently lasting only 12 weeks. And now with the ending of the $600 per week Federal supplement, we are headed for an even bigger crises for Florida workers. Add to the misery, most of these folks also lost their health insurance, and Florida’s decision not to expand Medicaid will leave them out of work, broke, with no health insurance and likely to lose their homes.
It’s time to get mad. It’s time to throw the bums out. It’s time for a change. We can do better for Florida’s working families. Send me to Tallahassee on November 3rd.
About AL: I’m a grumpy, retired business owner who lives in the blue-collar town of Sebastian and I am running for Florida House Seat 54. My opponent is a lawyer and a member of the local elite who works in a place called Tara Plantation. The difference is obvious. I will fight for the health and well-being of all Indian River County’s working families and seniors.
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