CBC Editorial: Tillis and Burr Must Support Federal Unemployment Extension

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

July 10, 2020

CBC Editorial: Tillis and Burr Must Support Federal Unemployment Extension

Pressure Mounts on Tillis, Burr to Prevent Massive Pandemic Pay Cut for North Carolina Working Families

Raleigh, N.C. - In an editorial published yesterday, North Carolina’s Capitol Broadcasting Company called on Senator Thom Tillis and Senator Richard Burr to support an extension of federal unemployment insurance beyond July 31. The CBC editorial specifically called on Tillis and Burr to advocate directly to Senate Republican leadership and “speak up and support extension of the $600 weekly benefit.”

“Senator Tillis and Senator Burr should listen to North Carolinians and finally promise they won’t give struggling families a pandemic pay cut at the end of this month,” said Piedmont Rising Executive Director Casey Wilkinson. “Extending federal unemployment insurance is essential to protecting hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians’ ability to pay for housing, health care, groceries and other essential expenses. There is no excuse for letting these payments expire.”

More from the CBC’s editorial:

• “At the end of July an average weekly injection of about $200 million will disappear from North Carolina’s economy.”

• “That $200 million is the additional $600 per week going to North Carolina’s unemployed that Congress approved back in March. That’s been $800 million a month -- more than $2.8 billion since payments began, injected into the state’s economy paying mortgages, rent, utilities, groceries, health care, credit card balances and more.”

• “Still, come the end of July the average weekly unemployment benefit being paid to the 777,000 qualified claimants will go from $877 to $277.”

• “There will be a huge drop in income when those benefits expire at the end of this month that will weigh on consumer spending and slow the recovery,” Gus Faucher, senior economist with PNC Financial Services Corp, recently told the Winston-Salem Journal. “So, I think some sort of extension of the expanded unemployment insurance benefits beyond July 31 would be good for those workers, but also for the economic recovery.”

• “That is advice that North Carolina’s two senators, Richard Burr and Thom Tillis should both take to heart and take to the Senate’s leadership. They need to speak up and support extension of the $600 weekly benefit.”

Read the full editorial here.

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About Piedmont Rising

Piedmont Rising is a 501 (c)4 issue advocacy organization built by and for North Carolinians to advocate for lower insurance premiums and prescription drug costs and to ensure that more people have access to safe and affordable health care. Through grassroots organizing, education, and engagement, we are amplifying our health care stories and holding our elected officials accountable to the people, and issues they were elected to represent. www.piedmontrising.org