July 21, 2020/Press

Editorials Blast Tillis For Being “Off the Radar” on Coronavirus and Federal Benefits as “Crisis Looms”

Two new scathing editorials blasted Senator Tillis for not promising to extend federal unemployment benefits and to help towns and cities struggling from the coronavirus, saying that he’s “off the radar when it comes to addressing the coronavirus pandemic” even as North Carolina is “a week away from going over a cliff.

Both editorials fault Tillis for helping transform North Carolina into “the worst state to be unemployed” and note that the looming cuts to federal benefits “would be especially strong in North Carolina” because of the state’s bottom-of-the-barrel unemployment payments, which Tillis instituted as Speaker in 2013.

Tillis last month said that extending unemployment may “make the problem worse.” As the CBC editorial board writes, Tillis’ “negligence and failure to act has resulted in an emergency. It is time to stop playing politics with the lives of North Carolinians.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

CBC: Editorial: Burr and Tillis need to help N.C. more than appease Trump
By the Editorial Board
July 21, 2020

Key Points:

  • North Carolinians may want to issue a “silver alert” to find U.S. senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis.
  • They’ve been off the radar when it comes to addressing the coronavirus pandemic. There’s some important business they need to attend to.
  • In just days, key unemployment benefits for more than 800,000 North Carolinians will end. It is a benefit that has added $600-a week to weekly unemployment benefits paid in the “worst state to be unemployed.” It has, through last week, injected $4.2 billion into the North Carolina economy – putting food on out-of-work family tables; paying rent and utility bills; childcare costs and medical care costs. It is money that gets spent in retail stores that keeps other workers on the job – and pumps sales taxes into the state and local government treasuries.
  • Tillis has offered milk-toast platitudes about getting people back to work as soon as possible. Burr has not made any public comments. They must be waiting on directions from the White House to let them know what’s best to do. The concern for North Carolinians is just who are Burr and Tillis looking to please and serve?
  • The Trump administration and the Senate, other than complain about the House’s plan, have done nothing. Their negligence and failure to act has resulted in an emergency.
  • It is time to stop playing politics with the lives of North Carolinians.

Read the full editorial online here.

News & Observer: A crisis looms for NC and the nation as federal relief and eviction bans come to an end.
By the Editorial Board
July 20, 2020

Key Points:

  • North Carolina, along with the rest of the nation, is a week away from going over a cliff.
  • Since April, the CARES Act has provided $600 a week in supplemental federal unemployment benefits to workers who lost jobs because of the COVID-19 lockdown.
  • This week, those benefits end.
  • The shock would be especially strong in North Carolina, where more than 600,000 individuals are receiving unemployment benefits. Without the federal subsidy, the unemployed will have to rely solely on the state’s unemployment insurance program – one of the stingiest in the nation. The state program pays a maximum of $350 a week, the equivalent of earning about $9 per hour. The average payment is $277 a week.
  • Whatever relief Congress agrees on, it must come quickly. There’s a cliff ahead.

Read the full editorial online here.