More Relief and Unemployment Benefits Hinges on Georgia

By Senator Ron Wyden 

With less than two weeks before the special Senate elections in Georgia, every Democrat should be talking about two things: relief checks and enhanced unemployment benefits.

Another round of relief checks and the continuation of enhanced unemployment benefits is only possible if Mitch McConnell is no longer the majority leader.

In this latest bill I pushed for $1,200 relief checks, retroactively reinstating the $600 weekly boost to unemployment benefits, and tying the additional weeks of federal unemployment benefit and the new program for gig workers and the self-employed to economic conditions on the ground so jobless workers don’t need to face another scenario where their income falls to zero overnight.

In contrast, Mitch McConnell’s original proposal included no relief payments, no weekly boost to unemployment benefits, and a paltry one-month extension of additional weeks of benefits and the program for gig workers. The kicker is that McConnell paired totally inadequate support for working families with tax breaks for CEOs three-martini lunches.

The COVID relief bill passed by Congress ended up including $600 relief checks, a $300 weekly boost to unemployment benefits through March 14, and a mere 11 week extension of unemployment benefits.

Even securing those benefits was a fight, with Republicans nickel-and-diming every provision. Checks for 17- and 18-year olds and adult children with permanent disabilities were dropped over Republicans’s cost concerns. And at one point, Republicans wanted unemployment benefits to expire on Valentine’s Day, a whole month earlier. 

The bill Congress passed this week is the bare minimum of what workers and small businesses need to stay afloat as the Covid-19 crisis goes on. And the only reason Mitch McConnell put it up for a vote is because the Georgia special elections are approaching, and McConnell needs his party to appear sympathetic to the plight of struggling families (and not just the ones serving three-martini lunches to CEOs and lobbyists). If not for those elections, McConnell would have pivoted right to economic sabotage.

Now, it’s worth considering why Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have fought so hard against checks and unemployment benefits when they are insanely popular with the American people and helped lift millions out of poverty in the spring. 

Just this month, Data for Progress polling showed that three out of every four voters support additional relief and are not concerned with the national debt. 

Even Donald Trump seems to realize this with his belated call for $2,000 checks.

But the popularity and success of relief checks and supercharged unemployment benefits is precisely why Mitch McConell and Senate Republicans have opposed them – there's no better evidence of Republicans' failed trickle-down economic agenda than the success of putting money in workers’ hands. 

Voters have seen that there’s no need to shower corporations with billions in tax cuts when the federal government can directly support workers.  

Now, while Congress was able to pass this bill, Republicans made crystal clear that they view this as the last major relief bill and have no intention of approving the additional robust relief the American people want and will most likely need come spring. Widespread vaccination will take months and the hardest-hit industries will not be back by April. 

So the stakes in Georgia could not be more clear: Will the American people get the checks and enhanced unemployment benefits they need next spring or will Mitch McConnell be able to inflict unnecessary pain on the American people for his own political benefit?

Democrats have the winning economic message here, and we need to hammer it home the next two weeks.