Extra $300 unemployment payment is about to run out

The $300-a-week payments with which federal authorities have supplemented state unemployment benefits for more than a month are running out, Gov. John Bel Edwards said Friday.

The federal payments to workers who were idled because of COVID-19 began in early August, after a $600 weekly payment passed by Congress expired. President Donald Trump used an executive order to create the smaller unemployment benefit enhancement, drawing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Disaster Assistance Fund.

The last $300 benefit enhancement will go to recipients soon for the week ending Sept. 5, Edwards said.

The Louisiana Workforce Commission reports that nearly 26,000 Louisiana workers filed initial unemployment claims for that week in addition to about 256,000 continuing claims.

St. Mary Parish had more than 2,000 unemployed workers in July, also according to the commission.

The $300 weekly enhancement has gone to unemployed Louisiana workers who were drawing at least $100 in weekly state benefits. The maximum state benefit is $247 a week.

The president drew some criticism for using an executive order to create the benefit, for lowering the weekly federal boost and for tapping a disaster fund as the peak of the hurricane season approached. But Edwards said at an earlier press conference that no one in the administration, including Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, thought of the president's action as anything but a temporary fix while Democrats and Republicans work out a new coronavirus aid package.

The House has approved $3.5 trillion for COVID assistance. But in the Senate, a Republican proposal for $500 billion in aid was shot down this week, largely by Democrats who said the aid was too little.

The Disaster Assistance Fund contained $69 billion when Trump signed the executive order. FEMA intended to keep $25 billion in the fund for conventional disaster aid, leaving $44 billion for the unemployment enhancement. The Advocate quotes a FEMA spokesman who said the $44 billion was sufficient for about six weeks of unemployment enhancement.

The $300 enhancement will have lasted five weeks if it expires Sept. 5.