The Worst People in the World

The North Carolina legislature for another in a string of extremist laws that tear the state’s once fairly robust safety net apart in order to appease plutocrat Art Pope:

Starting next week, North Carolina—which has the fifth highest jobless rate in the country—will become the only state in the union with no safety net for the long-term jobless. Thanks to reforms in the state’s unemployment insurance laws, North Carolina’s 71,000-plus long-term unemployed residents will lose access to the federally funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program.

North Carolina is losing eligibility to the federal program because of a new law, signed by the governor in February of this year, which reduces the number of weeks that unemployed people are eligible for state-funded benefits and cuts the maximum weekly benefit amount by roughly one third, from $535 to $350. It is the latter provision that has cost North Carolina workers its eligibility: States looking to receive federal EUC money are forbidden from cutting weekly benefits. The federal government granted a special exemption from that rule to four other states last year, North Carolina’s request for a similar exemption was ignored.

“I would call these cuts obscene,” said Michael Leachman, director of state fiscal research for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.