As Congress considers another round of stimulus, a lawmaker from Louisiana is taking issue with some of the suggestions.
House Republican Whip Steve Scalise of Metairie says the government can't keep paying unemployed individuals the extra $600 per week.
He says it doesn't make sense to pay people more than they can make going back to work, because they will stay home and make more money. Scalise said that five out of six people that are getting that enhanced unemployment are actually making more money not to work.
“I hear from small business owners every single day that are telling me they've offered jobs for people to come back to work in businesses that are safely opened again, and they're able to get some of them back, but some of them just are telling them, ‘I’m making more money at home,’ and they're not coming back. It's a real problem, you know, the other side of that is there are a lot more opportunities to create jobs, and you've seen it in some of the industries that are expanding even in a tough time.”
He is also concerned about spending more than a trillion dollars on another legislative package after all of the money from the previous legislation still has not been spent.
“There is a concern that there's a level that you surely have to be careful how far you go. When we look at it right now, there's about $500 billion of that money we appropriated that still hasn't been spent. So, I think the first thing you ought to do is look at that money, not spend more money, but say, ‘Let's make this $500 billion work better in other places where it's most needed.’ Because clearly, you know, if you over allocated in some areas, you look at hospitals, you look at schools that are going to need money for sanitizer and masks. Let's make sure that the money can be used for those kinds of things and that money is still out there. Congress doesn't need to pass another bill to appropriate that. So, I know there's a lot of talk about that as well. That's, you know, that's what we're doing. We're here to try to work through these differences.”