Unemployment benefits: Senate Democrats seek to cut weekly hike but add month of payments in stimulus bill

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The new arrangement would also make the first $ 10,200 of benefits tax-exempt.

This is a significant change from the House bill, which would provide an additional $ 400 per week until August 29 and continue both pandemic programs during the same period. The House bill does not contain a tax provision.

But West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin – the Democrats’ crucial 50th vote – does not yet support the plan, but has backed a Republican proposal to extend federal benefits by $ 300 per week until July.

Progress on the entire bill came to a halt on Friday afternoon as senators negotiated the issue.

The Senate voted on a series of amendments on Friday in a process known as “vote-a-rama” before moving to a final vote on the entire relief package.

Extend special programs in the event of a pandemic

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program provides benefits to freelancers, on-call workers, independent contractors and some people affected by the pandemic, while the Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program increases the duration of payments for those in the state’s traditional unemployment system.

Congress created these two temporary programs, along with a four-month, $ 600 weekly increase in its $ 2 trillion relief program nearly a year ago to help amortize laid-off workers during the economic slowdown fueled by the pandemic. The programs were extended and the $ 300 weekly boost was added as part of lawmakers’ $ 900 billion relief deal passed in December.

Stressing that millions of struggling Americans remain out of work, President Joe Biden called for providing a $ 400 raise and continuing programs through the end of September as part of the massive relief program that he unveiled just before taking office.

Asked about the Senate Dem’s unemployment insurance deal, a senior administration official said the White House was “really good with it” and pointed out that no longer taxing the top 10,200 $ benefit was “something the administration had been trying to figure out how to address.”

Race to a deadline

The differences between Senate and House bills, however, is another issue the two chambers must work out before sending final legislation to the President for signature.

The deadline that lawmakers have imposed on March 14 for the adoption of the relief plan is fast approaching. This is when unemployed Americans will begin to miss out on benefits in both programs, which will then gradually disappear over the following month. The $ 300 improvement also ends next weekend.

According to a recent Century Foundation study, around 11.4 million workers will lose their unemployment benefits between mid-March and mid-April, unless Congress takes action.

Even if lawmakers complete the bill in the coming days, some unemployed Americans could see a loss of benefits, as state unemployment agencies may take a few weeks to program the new provisions into their systems.

CNN’s Manu Raju and Phil Mattingly contributed to this report.

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