From today’s Rutland Herald:
The battle over how to deal with the state’s dwindling unemployment insurance fund continues. Next week… officials in Gov. James Douglas’ administration will offer a new version of their plan for the program, an earlier version of which lawmakers have already rejected.
The governor, who sent a scathing letter to legislative leaders last week about the issue, will again propose splitting the pain between workers and employers…
“The governor’s proposal that we rejected would have increased the tax on Vermont’s business community by $80 million over two years in a time when they are facing tremendous economic challenges,” Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, said recently. “It proposed draconian reductions in benefits to people who have just lost their jobs.”
In an economy in which businesses are struggling to keep their doors open, there’s real question about the wisdom of giving them a dramatic tax increase, even if it is something that in normal times seems fair and reasonable. Furthermore, cutting benefits is just short sighted and dangerous. It leads to less revenue going towards those businesses and causes people to cut back spending even more than they already had.
There are good ways and bad ways to handle a poor economy. Cutting benefits to the point where it accelerates the depression is not among the good.
is broken in large part because successive administrations (and the legislature) refused to update the revenue formula for unemployment insurance; the recession just hastened what everyone knew was coming; VT businesses have been undertaxed for many years; if we care about retaining the benefits available for displaced workers, there is no choice but to raise more money; the money offered by the feds is a loan that must be repaid; we really can’t wait any longer to deal with this
the sad part is that the result of increasing the tax will most likely be reduced wage gains for those who still have jobs; so the failure of the last few governors and the Leg. to deal with the problem means working stiffs pay the price (one way or another); kind of like millions losing their jobs because of Wall St. and the unwillingness of Clinton, Bush, and Congress to adequately regulate the markets
some things never change