Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

As Rick Green of the Granite State News Collaborative notes in an article that appears in our local newspaper this morning, GOP Governor Chris Sununu’s decision to withdraw from the federal unemployment payments hurts far more people than originally reported. He writes:

Much has been made of the fact that unemployment compensation checks will be reduced by $300 per week in New Hampshire on June 19 because Gov. Chris Sununu is joining other Republican governors in opting out of a federal pandemic aid program.

But what might not be so well known is that about 15,000 people — nearly half of those receiving unemployment in the state — will lose all unemployment benefits as of that day because the governor is also taking the state out of other federal programs that expand and extend unemployment benefits.

Federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance is one of those programs. It covers 8,600 people in the state who would not otherwise be eligible to receive unemployment compensation, some of them self-employed.

This includes those who have COVID-19, people living in a household where someone has it, those providing care to a family member who has it, people who have become the main support for a household because the breadwinner has died of the disease and those who had to quit a job as a direct result of the disease.

Another 6,500 people will lose their benefits because they were covered under Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which expanded the length of time for receiving benefits. Normal state coverage lasts for six months.

Extensions under the federal program boosted this to about a year.

About 32,000 people are receiving unemployment compensation in New Hampshire, and about half of these can continue to receive benefits through the state program.

What the article fails to note is that many of the INDIVIDUALS receiving these benefits are breadwinners in FAMILIES  and those families include children.

This entire episode involving support for unemployed families is partisan politics at its worst. There is not a single Democrat led State that has refused to accept these funds because not a single GOP member voted to approve them. Both parties are beholden to the billionaires who bankroll their campaigns, but only the GOP is so beholden to business that they would deny funds to families whose “…breadwinner has died of the disease and those who had to quit a job as a direct result of the disease.” But at least the children can secure a voucher to attend a private religious school and they can get a gun to protect themselves if someone tries to break into their home— assuming they have one after they are unable to pay the rent.