11 Million Americans to Lose Federal Benefits

• Author: Jacob Greene
• Posted: 2024-08-14

Of all days to end the federal unemployment stimulus of $300 per week, the Joe Biden administration has planned to end it on September 6, which is ironically labor day in America. For a few months, the speculation was that there was no way that Biden wouldn't just extend the benefits indefinitely through an executive order, but that was when he still had political capital to spend, coming off of the Trump presidency and all the drama that followed it. Since that point, there have been too many controversies surrounding the Biden presidency to dig further into America's federal coffers for more money. A southern border crisis and a debacle in Afghanistan pretty much knocked a re-up of the federal stimulus off the table. So, come September 6, roughly 11 million Americans will be out $300 per week in unemployment benefits.

To say that this is going to sting the economy is an understatement. The good news is that eviction moratoriums might be put back in place shortly, when the legislation is again reworked and heard by the Supreme Court. The bad news is that 11 million Americans are going to be receiving far less money per week than they were previously, and this means many people are going to suffer by coming up short on utility bills, groceries, and especially medications like insulin, which are insanely expensive under this administration. While everyone knew that the benefits could not last forever, the reason so many are upset now is that half of the economy is still shut down. In nearly every state with a Democratic governor, the economies are barely just chugging along, and they're facing rampant unemployment. And in Republican-led states, they may have opened back up a little too soon and end up with surging COVID cases that send them back into another lock-down.

The point here is that the time just feels off for so many. Even people who are not relying on that $300 weekly benefit have voiced their displeasure and the benefit ending while a pandemic is still raging.

While the Biden administration shortly basked in the glow of an employment bump for a few months of his presidency, word finally broke that this bump was specifically from Republican states that opened their economies back up. So, with President Biden urging everyone to go back into lock-downs, it was just too disingenuous to pretend that he had anything to do with the bump, and that was a whole lot of political capital lost there. And when it comes to keeping the money flowing, Biden has already pledged over $500 million to help Afghan refugees and billions to help immigrants crossing the southern border. Along with trillions spent in an infrastructure bill, the administration cannot rightly extend the benefits further in any good fiscal conscience. It's just too much spending. Every week the benefits are handed out, that's over $3.3 billion in federal money being spent. There is just not feasible way to keep that up with everything else that's going on in the world and in America today.

Labor Shortage Statistics Hard to Measure

A lot of people have claimed that the cure for the loss of federal benefits is for people to simply get back to work. The thinking here is that America's labor shortage should have a job for everyone. Though no one really knows what the true numbers are for the labor shortage. Some estimate it from around 4 million, to high estimates of around 11 million, which would mean that a job's waiting for every single person who's on unemployment benefits right now. Thought it's highly unlikely that we would just stumble into a solution so easily, not to even mention the fact that labor shortage numbers are very hard to calculate.

For instance, take any restaurant out there that's operating. Say that they report a labor shortage. Well, just how many are they short? Businesses operate while short staffed all the time, so it could be that they're just down two employees, or it could be that they could use a dozen or more to really get going. There are no polling places that go door to door to ask that sort of specific information, so everything is up for interpretation. The same thing holds true with all sorts of businesses. A construction company may need five people, or it may need five more complete crews. They're just reporting a shortage, not how many they're short.

All we know for sure is that the federal benefits are likely to end, and it would be shocking if Biden extended them.