Unemployment Benefits to be Changed

• Author: Jessica Williams
• Posted: 2024-02-25

In the one year that Joe Biden has been President, there have been too many changes to America to count. Among the big changes, you see more immigration pouring into America than at any other point in the nation's history. You see higher inflation than has ever existed. You see the nation trying to involve itself in more foreign wars. And perhaps most blatantly, you're seeing the highest rates of unemployment ever recorded. The trick the government plays, of course, is that they don't count the unemployed as being unemployed unless (a) they were fired or laid off of work, or (b) they're currently drawing unemployment benefits from the state. Since the federal government cut off its $300/week federal unemployment benefit, states now handle unemployment, but that doesn't mean that the federal government is done with these benefits. There have been reports this week that the federal government is considering taxing people for their unemployment benefits.

No one knows for sure what these taxes would be as of yet, but early reports suggest that the federal government wants to force states to charge their typical state income tax, while the federal government will tack on their federal income tax charge. So, to put it simply, the federal government wants to transform the unemployment check into an actual paycheck, complete with a tax refund at the end of the year, which some experts claim is entirely laughable and just defeats the purpose.

This isn't a law yet, by any stretch; it's just now being talked about and pushed out for feelers. So, is this something that may happen? In all likelihood, probably not.

Benefits Count, Until They Don't

A lot of people in the workforce and out have pointed out that the federal government has no business dipping its toes back into the unemployment pool, since unemployment has always been a state issue. It was one thing when Donald Trump started the federal unemployment benefit supplement, but it's another thing entirely to have the government decide that it's going to reach into people's benefits to draw taxes out, which is essentially the federal government taking money from the states. Then there's also the fact that the federal government doesn't have any use for the unemployed unless they're drawing a benefits check. As soon as someone's benefits expire, or in the event they cannot receive benefits, the federal government doesn't even count them as unemployed, which allows them to lie to the American people every month about the actual unemployment rate in America.

There are a lot of issues with unemployment, and many people fear that the federal government's plans for 2022 will just make things worse than ever, and that's not even getting into future plans.

Brace Yourself for 2023

These proposed changes to unemployment benefits are highly unlikely to go through, and that's because 2023's proposed benefits changes would just fly in the face of what's being proposed this year. To understand why this is, you first have to understand the reports coming out of the Biden Administration about potential 2023 changes to the unemployment system, that would seek to prioritize giving unemployment benefits to black Americans first, then other POC groups. This isn't at all an outlandish thing for this government, that just passed a bill that's literally spending billions of dollars to give drug paraphernalia to black Americans in the name of 'racial equity.'

So, as you can imagine, if the government is planning next year to revamp unemployment benefits so that black Americans are the first to receive them and ultimately receive more of them than everyone else, having a tax on those benefits would be considered some type of racial injustice or a form of 'white supremacy' that must be stamped out. So while this month's news is that the government is planning on taxing people's unemployment benefits, the fact is that this is very unlikely to happen. With what the Biden Administration has planned, they want to give trillions of dollars away and aren't very concerned about collecting any more money from taxpayers. They will just print the money instead.

As it stands now, unemployment benefits haven't changed at all since the federal government cut off their supplement last Labor Day. They're still available for 12 to 26 weeks, and they're still only given to people who were fired or laid off.