White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said that Republicans will unveil their plan to provide an unemployment insurance extension on Monday.
Mr. Meadows told ABC that the extension would not maintain the extra $600 per week sum, but instead would amount to “70% of whatever the wages you were [making] prior to being unemployed.”
Mr. Meadows said he has met with Republicans on Capitol Hill throughout the weekend and expects Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to unveil the proposal on Monday.
“[H]onestly, I see us being able to provide unemployment insurance, maybe a retention credit to keep people from being displaced or being brought back into the workplace, helping with our schools,” Mr. Meadows told ABC’s “This Week.” “If we can do that along with liability protection, perhaps we put that forward, get that passed, as we negotiate on the rest of the bill in the weeks to come.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that she was unwilling to adopt a short-term extension of an unemployment boost while policymakers hammer out other aspects of a coronavirus relief package. House Democrats have advocated for a more than $3 trillion spending package on coronavirus relief that would maintain the $600-per-week addition to unemployment benefits through January.
Alongside overcoming lawmakers’ complaints, the Trump administration will need to surpass institutional barriers to implementing its unemployment insurance proposal as well. Mr. Meadows said the federal government recognizes that some state computer systems responsible for administering unemployment are “antiquated,” so he and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin have a goal of ensuring that such computer systems do not prevent people from collecting unemployment benefits under the new proposal.
