Until Kung Flu has been proven to be FAKE, and these "Closures" are eradicated, the least the Govt can do, is continue on with the Unemployment payments. They are acting like jobs are easily accessible. HELLLLOOO… It's not like a GOVT job. Where you can sit on your ass, and collect your paycheck, make money off insider trading, and kick backs.
Some jobs are GONE. Others can not OPEN back up. WTF is wrong with BOTH SIDES and using us as pawns? They want to play these games, then they are going to need to PAY.
Nearing the end of $600 unemployment lifeline, an Arizona woman risked coronavirus to help pay bills
Sheri Johnson knows what it's like to be desperate during the current pandemic, and she doesn't want anyone else to feel the same.
"Don't make the American people desperate. Don't force people's back into a corner to where terrible things start happening because they're not being left any other choice," said Johnson, a laid-off general manager of a restaurant in Yuma, Arizona, when she was asked what she needs from Congress' next round of stimulus efforts.
Unfortunately, Johnson, a single mother who relied entirely on the extra $600 per week of unemployment benefits from the CARES Act to keep her family afloat over the last three months, was speaking from experience.
MORE: 'They're going to fall off a cliff': August set to bring new financial anguish as coronavirus aid lifelines expire
Her 21-year-old daughter Susan, a waitress, recently returned to work at a restaurant, opened at partial capacity, to try and help her mother pay off some bills.
She caught coronavirus soon after and has been in the hospital for four weeks. Johnson and her younger daughter, who is 16, can't visit her.
"My daughter went back to work out of necessity. And look what happened. I'll be lucky if she comes home," Johnson said.
"I don't know how anybody can not understand. That extra money, at this point in time, it's life changing. It's everything," she said. "This isn't about not wanting to work. It's about wanting to survive."
Even with the unemployment boost, Johnson has been trying to cut back on spending ever since she lost her job. She used to make over $50,000 a year, which was well over the $800 per week she got from unemployment, even with the boost. Without it, she'll get around $200 of unemployment from the state of Arizona – not nearly enough to pay her rent of $950 a month, even if she didn't spend a dime of it on phone bills, her car insurance or electricity.
This is the cost Americans face as an unemployment boost implemented in March to staunch the intense job loss of the last three months comes to a halt.
Some 30 million Americans are poised to lose their weekly $600 check after this weekend. By Sunday, all states will have sent out their last checks, the Labor Department said, absent a last-minute deal by Congress to extend the unemployment boost, which is not expected.
In the interim, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that Republicans back "some temporary federal supplement to unemployment insurance while fixing the obvious craziness of paying people more to remain out of the workforce." But it's not clear what that supplement would look like or how quickly it could be programmed into unemployment systems, which are different in every state.
Congress initially passed the $600-per-week boost for all unemployed Americans in late March, as part of the CARES Act. It was developed so that Americans who lost their job because of the halting effect of coronavirus could continue to bring in nearly all of the wages they were previously earning, which regular unemployment, as it was, wouldn't do.
But as the unemployment boost expires, leaving tens of millions of Americans with an income deficit of $2,400 a month, Congress specifically Senate Republicans is faced with finding a replacement.
So far, they've suggested a version of unemployment insurance that would replace wages by 70%, instead of 40%, which is the nationwide average for regular unemployment.
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https://www.yahoo.com/gma/nearing-end-600-unemployment-lifeline-arizona-woman-risked-100455138–abc-news-topstories.html