As unemployment keeps going up, do-nothing WisGOP costs Wis taxpayers

Like all other states, Wisconsin is having to deal with the unprecedented increase in unemployment claims that was triggered by the outbreak of COVID 19. And we learned today just how quickly the state’s unemployment trust fund might go from $1.86 billion to $0 as a result of all of these claims.

Currently UI is experiencing unprecedented claim volume with over 300,000 weekly claims per week. This is 194% higher than the average number of weekly claims received during the first year of the Great Recession. Due to the uncertain future impacts of COVID-19, it is unknown if Wisconsin will continue to experience this high volume of claims and for how long this may occur. For this reason, it is difficult to project when or even if the UI Trust Fund may exhaust and Wisconsin will need to borrow from the federal government in order to pay benefits, as it did during the Great Recession.

The main driver of when or if Wisconsin will exhaust the UI Trust Fund depends primarily upon the level of weekly claims UI receives going forward. The three hypothetical scenarios range from a high of 255,000 payable claims per week to a low of 85,000 payable claims per week. The impact of a third, middle scenario, is also included, which assumes 170,000 payable claims per week. Exhaustion dates range from approximately October 2020 in the high claim scenario to September 2021 in the low claim scenario. The scenarios are based on an assumed level of weekly claims, however, do not represent a projection of claims levels by the department.

To give you an idea about where we stand, we were just under 316,000 claims in the week of April 25, but were under 30,000 this time a year ago.

We'll see if that decline for the last week in April is a sign that some people are coming back to work, or if recent furloughs at a number of other employers counteracts any restored jobs, and that number rises again. If we can cut the number of currently unemployed in half (on the average), then we would be at that middle scenario, which gets us through the end of 2020 without having to borrow any money from the Feds.

Of course, we can take care of any deficit by raising the tax that employers pay toward the unemployment fund. And the key time frame is June 30. If that $1.86 billion in May drops below $1.2 billion in the next 8 weeks, then employers would have to pay more tax into the fund (around 0.1%).

This would happen automatically, but it seems to be a nice incentive for our "job creators" to hire people back quicker. Y'know, unless they were always BSing us about how they could be trusted to do the right thing, and instead just want to make workers more desperate by forcing them back to work, no matter how unsafe the job might be.

And if we slip under $1.2 billion in that fund, part of it may be because WisGOP “leadership” cost that unemployment fund (and state taxpayers) $25 million. And it happened for no reason other than pure laziness.

Wisconsin lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers all agreed the state's one-week waiting period should be suspended after Evers declared a public health emergency in early March when the virus began to spread in Wisconsin.

But GOP legislative leaders didn't schedule floor sessions to pass legislation until the week of April 13, two weeks after the federal CARES Act was passed that would have provided money to states for claimants' first week of unemployment benefits.

"Within those two weeks, the federal government will not reimburse us," DWD spokesman Ben Jedd said.

Gov. Tony Evers proposed legislation to GOP legislative leaders on March 21, which included suspension of the one-week waiting period.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said at the time they wanted to wait until the CARES Act was signed by President Donald Trump before acting on state legislation to ensure the state wasn't on the hook for spending it couldn't pay for.

Now we’re on the hook for those two weeks anyway, because of WisGOP’s dawdling and posing. AND FOR WHAT?

What is it....you do here?

Then these adolescents have the nerves to whine that Evers won’t give everything WMC they want as we deal with this historic pandemic. These guys couldn’t even show up to get needed work done, which I bet the average 12-year-old could do if he/she was being paid $50,000 a year.

I certainly believe a 12-year-old would listen to a US Senator if she told them they needed to act in order to get the $25 million. But Vos and Fitz didn't.

I warned @SenFitzgerald and @repvos about this over a month ago.

They didn't listen, but they should have. https://t.co/wzO3tLL9Qp https://t.co/7HgSXYpZTX

— Sen. Tammy Baldwin (@SenatorBaldwin) May 7, 2020

The WisGOPs clearly have no concept about how to make the grown-up choices that we so badly need from our Legislature these days. But it doesn't stop them and their fellow GOP stooges on the Wisconsin Supreme Court from trying to take the responsibilities of dealing with the crisis away from the adults in the Governor’s Office.

FIRE THESE CLOWNS. Before these gerrymandered legislators screw up our recovery through (in)action and arrogance, just like how they’ve screwed everything else up since COVID 19 became a thing.