Tag: unemployment

U.S. Senate passes coronavirus relief aid; bill now returns to the House

By Ariana Figueroa and Ohio Capital Journal

Washington, DC – The U.S. Senate passed President Joe Biden’s nearly $2 trillion stimulus plan Saturday afternoon after wrangling over an amendment to trim unemployment benefits derailed the bill’s passage for nearly an entire day.

Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown supported the bill while Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman voted against it.

The Senate version, which does not include a federal minimum wage hike and puts limits on the funding for state and local governments, will now make its way to the House for review. Democrats are rushing to pass the relief package so it reaches the president’s desk before the March 14 deadline for unemployment benefits expire, in order to give states plenty of time to avoid missing those payments.

No Republicans voted for the House bill last week. The bill passed the Senate along party lines, 50-49. A tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris was not needed because Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) had to leave the Capitol after a family emergency.

“This bill will deliver more help to more people than anything the federal government has done in decades,” Senate Majority Leader Sen. Charles Schumer said in a statement on passage of the bill.

House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a statement that the House would take up the bill on Tuesday.

The Senate version of the relief package earmarks $10 billion of the $350 billion in aid to state, local governments, territories and tribes to go toward a state’s infrastructure projects such as improving broadband access. The Senate also set restrictions on how the money can be used, saying cities and states can’t use it to pay down pension costs or pay for new attempts to cut taxes.

The bill would provide $130 billion toward helping schools reopen, $14 billion for vaccine distribution and billions more for childcare through a temporary expansion of the child tax credit. The bill also includes a narrower eligibility for individual stimulus checks of $1,400, where individuals making $80,000 and joint tax filers at $160,000 would be phased out.

The Senate version provides for $300 weekly unemployment benefits — lower than the $400 a week in the House bill — through Sept. 6. It also makes the first $10,200 of unemployment insurance nontaxable for households with incomes under $150,000.

It was the unemployment benefits package that stalled the Senate on Friday. More than 400 amendments were introduced to the Senate version of the bill, but as lawmakers were preparing to vote on the first — Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) proposal to increase the federal minimum wage — Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVa.) raised objections to an unemployment amendment.

Sen. Tom Carper (D- Del.) had offered an amendment that kept federal unemployment benefits at the current $300 a week but extended the benefits through October, and made the first $10,200 nontaxable.

A competing amendment from Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) also kept benefits to $300 a week, but also cut off the extension in mid-July.

Both sides were attempting to win over Manchin, a moderate Democrat and a crucial swing vote in the 50-50 Senate.

Democrats struck a deal with Manchin after a nine-hour impasse, and passed the amendment 50-49 around 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

“The President has made it clear we will have enough vaccines for every American by the end of May and I am confident the economic recovery will follow,” Manchin said in a statement.

“The President supports the compromise agreement, and is grateful to all the Senators who worked so hard to reach this outcome,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement after the deal. “It extends supplemental unemployment benefit into September, and helps the vast majority of unemployment insurance recipients avoid unanticipated tax bills.”

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told reporters on Capitol Hill Friday that it was unclear what the House will do.

“Will the House take it? I don’t have the answer to that,” he said.

Progressives in the House are already expressing disappointment that the Senate reduced unemployment benefits and stripped out a raise of the federal minimum wage.

“I’m frankly disgusted with some of my colleagues and question whether I can support this bill,” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) wrote in a tweet.

Sanders’ amendment to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour over a five-year period was defeated 42 to 58. The House included the wage hike in its version even after the Senate parliamentarian ruled that including the provision violated procedural rules, which are being used to approve the stimulus package with a simple majority of 51 votes instead of the 60 typically required by the Senate filibuster.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, for an annual salary of about $15,000, and has not been raised since 2007.

“The result of that is half of our people are now living paycheck to paycheck and many in fact are working for wages that are much too low in order to take care of their families,” Sanders said.

Experts and researchers predict that a gradual increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would help lift nearly a million people out of poverty and benefit low-income workers across the country, particularly in the South.

Debate over the relief package was also delayed on Thursday by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) who required Senate clerks to read aloud the 628-page bill — a procedure that senators typically waive. Senate clerks started reading the bill Thursday at 3:20 p.m. and finished early Friday morning at 2:04 a.m.

Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday that he planned to have members of his party submit hundreds of amendments to prevent Democrats from rushing to pass the bill in the hopes of wearing them down in order to trim the $1.9 trillion package.

“All I’m trying to do is make a more deliberative process on this abusive and obscene amount of money,” he said Thursday.

GOP Senators filed more than 400 amendments. Of those amendments, only three were adopted into the bill. Democrats introduced eight amendments, of which five were passed.

Mar 6, 2021
Portman, fan of a big tax cut for the rich, won’t say whether he supports $2T in coronavirus relief

By Marty Schladen and Ohio Capital Journal

The office of Ohio Sen. Rob Portman won’t say whether he’s one of the Senate Republicans unwilling to support a coronavirus-relief bill under negotiation between the Trump White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, on Tuesday warned the White House not to agree to the bill because the $2 trillion price tag was too high for many in his caucus. That message comes as hopes of passing a relief bill before next year seem to be dimming.

With a raging virus continuing to throttle the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell earlier this month urged passage of a relief bill to avoid lasting damage. Many other economists have been making the same argument, while those who study poverty say legions of Americans are being added to its numbers.

In Ohio, those who work with the poor warn of cascading homelessness and say food banks are seeing huge demand.

After passage of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March, the Democratically controlled House in May passed a $3.4 trillion coronavirus relief bill that wasn’t taken up by the Republican-controlled Senate.

It wasn’t until late July — as federal unemployment supplements were running out — that McConnell introduced his own bill. But he later admitted that he didn’t have enough votes in his own caucus to pass it.

Earlier this month, just after a covid-infected Trump was released from the hospital, he abruptly broke off negotiations with House Democrats. Then he abruptly reversed himself again and by Tuesday he was saying he wanted a bigger package than the $2.2 trillion deal being pushed by Pelosi and the Democrats.

For his part, McConnell has been promoting a bill less than an fourth that size — $500 billion — that would have included an unemployment supplement and aid to schools. Democrats blocked it Wednesday, saying the bill was woefully inadequate.

On Tuesday, McConnell gave another reason for not wanting to schedule a hearing on a larger bill: It could disrupt the breakneck schedule to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett before the Nov. 3 election, the Washington Post reported.

Ohio’s Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown

That brought a blast from Ohio’s Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown.

“Once again, Mitch McConnell is telling Americans, ‘you’re on your own,’” Brown said in an email. “Millions of people are suffering right now and he would rather stall a COVID relief package to continue rushing through an illegitimate Supreme Court nomination. Workers are struggling to figure out how to pay their bills, stay in their homes, and keep their families safe while McConnell would rather focus on his power grab.”

Portman’s staff wouldn’t answer directly when asked whether he supported a relief bill of about $2 trillion, roughly the size of that being negotiated between House Democrats and the Trump administration.

“Rob has consistently called on both parties to come to an agreement on additional covid relief for families and small businesses — legislation that would support increased (coronavirus) testing, provide additional funding for schools and state and local communities, restart the Payment Protection Program, and provide needed liability protections,” spokeswoman Emmalee Cioffi said in an email.

She also provided a transcript of a Sept. 10 speech Portman gave on the Senate floor in which he castigated the earlier covid-relief bill passed by House Democrats as too expensive.

“It’s a $3.5 trillion bill,” Portman said. “And remember, we’ve already spent about $3.5 trillion making this the largest deficit in the history of our country and making our debt now, for the first time since World War II, the size of our entire economy. That concerns all of us, and it should.”

Portman also was highly critical of Obama-era deficit spending amid a historic recession.

But he wasn’t nearly so concerned about deficits in 2017 when he was pushing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at a time when the federal unemployment rate was 4.1%.

Portman claimed the $1.5 trillion tax cut — which gave massive breaks to the richest Americans — would stimulate so much economic growth that it would pay for itself, although such promises almost never have panned out in American history.

Portman’s promise was quickly shown to be empty, and by early 2018, the tax cut was projected to add more than $1.3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. Nor did it deliver the economic growth that Portman, Trump and McConnell promised, the Congressional Research Service reported last year.

Just before Congress passed the tax cuts, Portman told WKSU that he’d support clawing them back if they didn’t produce the promised growth. So far, that hasn’t happened, either.

Marty Schladen has been a reporter for decades, working in Indiana, Texas and other places before returning to his native Ohio to work at The Columbus Dispatch in 2017. He’s won state and national journalism awards for investigations into utility regulation, public corruption, the environment, prescription drug spending and other matters.

Oct 22, 2020

Working for less: Most common Cincinnati jobs pay too little

Last year, six of Ohio’s 10 most common jobs paid so little that a typical worker would need food assistance to feed a family of three — generally less than $26,000 a year.

From the booming Columbus metro area to struggling Youngstown, too many jobs across Ohio don’t pay enough for families to get by.

The research by Hannah Halbert, with research assistance from Isaac Miller of Policy Matters Ohio shows that too many jobs in Cincinnati pay too little and many pay less as a share of poverty than they did nearly two decades ago. New data released by the U.S. Department of Labor show that six of the Cincinnati area’s 10 most common jobs pay the typical worker too little to feed a family of three without food assistance (earnings under 130 percent of poverty typically qualify).

At a time when state and federal policymakers are determined to erect new barriers to food assistance and health care, these new data show that the challenge is not requiring people to work, as most already do. Rather, the true challenge is getting employers—many of which are major international corporations with vast profits—to pay their workers a fair wage with benefits and set a schedule that provides some measure of job security.

Low wages were not always so ubiquitous in the Cincinnati area. In 2000, five of the 10 most common occupations paid so little that a family of three was left dependent on food assistance to get by- now it’s six. Some occupations paid less as a share of poverty in 2017 than they did a decade and a half ago. The new rules of Ohio’s labor market are so tilted in favorof corporate employers that many Cincinnatians will not be able to work their way to self-sufficiency.

The fact sheet for the Cincinnati area shows the median annual salary and hourly wage of the metro area’s 10 most common jobs in 2000 and 2017, and how far they went towards lifting a family of three out of poverty. The fact sheets also contain data showing which sectors have grown and which have declined since 2017.

“State and federal leaders are trying to create new barriers to health care, food aid and housing assistance. If they succeed, many of Ohio’s working people will slip deeper into poverty.”

“Throughout Ohio, not only are many of the most common jobs paying extremely low wages, many do less to lift working people out of poverty than they did in 2000,” Policy Matters Ohio Researcher Hannah Halbert said. “State and federal leaders are trying to create new barriers to health care, food aid and housing assistance. If they succeed, many of Ohio’s working people will slip deeper into poverty.”

Working for Less
Most common occupations in the Cincinnati metropolitan area, by employment, 2017
Top 10 occupations 2017	Total Employment	Median Hourly Wage	Median Annual Salary	Median annual earnings as a share of poverty
Food Prep & Serving Workers, including Fast Food (-)	31,720	$9.18	$19,090	93%
Retail Salespersons (+)	29,450	$10.95	$22,780	112%
Registered Nurses (+)	23,580	$30.80	$64,050	314%
Laborers & Freight, Stock & Material Movers (+)	23,190	$13.59	$28,260	138%
Cashiers (+)	21,320	$9.50	$19,760	97%
Waiters & Waitresses (-)	20,170	$9.16	$19,050	93%
Customer Service Reps (-)	20,080	$15.31	$31,840	156%
Stock Clerks & Order Fillers (+)	17,640	$11.87	$24,690	121%
Office Clerks (+)	17,440	$15.29	$31,800	156%
Janitors & Cleaners, except Maids & Housekeeping (-)	15,670	$11.42	$23,750	116%
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) Survey, May 2017 estimates, available at https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm, accessed April 13, 2018. Largest detail occupations in Cincinnati MSA by employment. Median annual earnings shown as a share of the poverty threshold for a family of three in 2017 ($20,420). The gross monthly income threshold for food assistance is generally 130 percent of poverty. Red text highlights the occupations paying a typical wage below this threshold. (-) indicates a median wage lower than the state median for that occupation. (+) indicates a median wage higher than the state’s for that occupation. Note that Cincinnati MSA includes areas in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

“Examining statewide numbers, Ohio may look better off than it really is,” Halbert said. Although the state has recovered all the jobs lost during the recession, since 2007, 215,000 fewer Ohioans are participating in the workforce — pushing down last year’s statewide unemployment rate of 5 percent. Statewide data also masks deep regional disparities and wage stagnation.

Wrong Direction
Cincinnati MSA occupations, employment and median annual wage: 2000 and 2017
Top 10 occupations 2000	Earnings as share of poverty	Top 10 occupations 2017	Earnings as share of poverty
Retail Salespersons	119%	Food Prep & Serving Workers, including Fast Food-	93%
Cashiers	102%	Retail Salesperson-	112%
Laborers & Freight, Stock & Material Movers	141%	Registered Nurses+	314%
Food Prep & Serving Workers, including Fast Food	97%	Laborers & Freight, Stock & Material Movers-	138%
General & Operations Managers	402%	Cashiers-	97%
Office Clerks	152%	Waiters & Waitresses	93%
Customer Service Reps	177%	Customer Service Reps-	156%
Registered Nurses	295%	Stock Clerks & Order Fillers-	121%
Waiters & Waitresses	93%	Office Clerks+	156%
Packers and Packagers	120%	Janitors & Cleaners, except Maids & Housekeeping-	116%
Source: BLS, OES Survey, 2000 Cincinnati MSA estimates and May 2017 estimates, accessed 4/13/18 at https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm. Largest detail occupations in Cincinnati MSA by employment. Median annual earnings shown as share of poverty threshold for a family of three in 2000 ($14,150) and 2017 ($20,420). The gross monthly income threshold for food assistance is generally 130 percent of poverty. Red font notes occupations that have median annual earnings under 130% of poverty for a family of three. (+) indicates earnings increased since 2000, (-) indicates the earnings decreased since 2000, as a share of poverty. Note that Cincinnati MSA includes areas in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

“Ohio needs leaders who will make a renewed public commitment to working people,” Halbert said. “Both the nation and state have productive economies with abundant wealth. We can use policy to shape the economy to benefit working people. Only the lack of political will keeps leaders from passing policies to improve job quality, make education and training affordable and fund basic services like transit and childcare that help people work.”

The Cincinnati region on average had 1,093,600 jobs last year. That’s 49,800 more jobs than in 2007, when the last recession began. The Cincinnati region has been a driver of the Ohio recovery. One of the top jobs, registered nurse, provides better earnings. This job relies in part on maintaining expanded health coverage. Yet, many of the jobs that have grown over recent years do not offer the same income or stability as those lost. Manufacturing took the biggest hit. Growing sectors, like leisure and hospitality, often pay poorly and lack benefits.

Job quality has been eroded. Ohio tax policy has sent big cuts to the wealthiest, shrinking funding for education, infrastructure, and healthcare—investments that help working people and their kids get ahead.

Job quality has been eroded. Ohio tax policy has sent big cuts to the wealthiest, shrinking funding for education, infrastructure, and healthcare—investments that help working people and their kids get ahead.

Policy Matters Ohio has set out 10 policy priorities that help working people by raising wages, extending overtime protections, providing paid leave, preserving public jobs and more. These new data show that such policies are essential in the Cincinnati region where jobs still make it hard to get by.

May 12, 2018

Tag: unemployment

U.S. Senate passes coronavirus relief aid; bill now returns to the House

Portman, fan of a big tax cut for the rich, won’t say whether he supports $2T in coronavirus relief

Working for less: Most common Cincinnati jobs pay too little

Last year, six of Ohio’s 10 most common jobs paid so little that a typical worker would need food assistance to feed a family of three — generally less than $26,000 a year.

“State and federal leaders are trying to create new barriers to health care, food aid and housing assistance. If they succeed, many of Ohio’s working people will slip deeper into poverty.”

Working for Less

Top 10 occupations 2017

Food Prep & Serving Workers, including Fast Food (-)

Retail Salespersons (+)

Registered Nurses (+)

Laborers & Freight, Stock & Material Movers (+)

Cashiers (+)

Waiters & Waitresses (-)

Customer Service Reps (-)

Stock Clerks & Order Fillers (+)

Office Clerks (+)

Janitors & Cleaners, except Maids & Housekeeping (-)

Wrong Direction

Top 10 occupations 2000

Retail Salespersons

Cashiers

Laborers & Freight, Stock & Material Movers

Food Prep & Serving Workers, including Fast Food

General & Operations Managers

Office Clerks

Customer Service Reps

Registered Nurses

Waiters & Waitresses

Packers and Packagers

Job quality has been eroded. Ohio tax policy has sent big cuts to the wealthiest, shrinking funding for education, infrastructure, and healthcare—investments that help working people and their kids get ahead.