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Cleveland
Plain Dealer...
Kasich
makes a defensible case for
rejecting more federal unemployment aid:
editorial
August 30, 2011
Though
it’s a close call, Gov. John
Kasich’s administration correctly said “no thanks” to a $176 million
grant from
Washington to expand eligibility for Ohio’s unemployment compensation
program.
Currently,
the maximum Ohio weekly
unemployment benefit is $524 for an unemployed Ohioan with three or
more
dependents.
Kasich’s
administration says, and
correctly so, that Ohio owes the U.S. Treasury $2.6 billion for
unemployment
compensation money the state has borrowed. (That amounts to $225 per
Ohioan.)
What
isn’t said, and little wonder, is
that Kasich; the Democrat he unseated, Ted Strickland; state
legislators of
both parties; and Statehouse business lobbies have irresponsibly
refused to
address that debt seriously.
And
no matter who does the math, the
$2.6 billion tab limits Ohio’s options, if not legally, then
practically.
It
may be, as Kasich’s critics claim,
that taking Washington’s $176 million (as a grant, not a loan) might
lighten
the interest charges on Ohio’s federal debt.
A
Department of Job & Family
Services analysis done in 2009, when Strickland was governor, suggested
that
$176 million sluicing into the unemployment compensation trust fund
could prune
Ohio’s annual interest payment by $8 million.
But
that same Strickland-era analysis
also said that some employers would see increases in their unemployment
compensation tax, and noted that any additional cost to Ohio’s
individual
employers “would be a hardship during this especially deep recession.”
Had
Kasich asked for the $176 million,
it could have been used for at least two of four federally specified
options:
•Making
Ohioans eligible for
unemployment benefits even if they are available only for part-time
work.
•Making
Ohioans eligible for benefits
if they leave jobs due to domestic violence.
•Granting
unemployed Ohioans an
additional 26 weeks of benefits if they take approved job training.
•Granting
unemployed Ohioans an
additional benefit of $15 per week per dependent.
Those
are all worthy pursuits. Ohio’s
statewide unemployment rate in July was 9 percent. And Kasich’s
decision was no
doubt inflected by his business-friendly (he’d say, job-friendly)
thinking.
But
expanding a program already $2.6
billion in the hole would just dig the hole deeper. That seems unwise
for Ohio
at the moment.
Read
it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer
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