Scrap unemployment changes

During her Condition of the State speech in January, Gov. Kim Reynolds slapped a callous label on tens of thousands of unemployed Iowans — lazy.

“Government has taken away the need or desire to work. The safety net has become a hammock,” Reynolds told a joint legislative session.

This is, of course, a vast oversimplification of the plight of the unemployed, pushed for political effect. Iowans find themselves out of work for myriad reasons, from business closures to health concerns. Yes, there are also tens of thousands of job openings in the state, but those opportunities are uneven and often depend on where you live.

But bashing people who find themselves in need of public assistance is a long-standing Republican trope. It’s stoked by conservative groups and think tanks imploring legislators across the country to shrink the social safety net, even if those ideas are a bad fit for Iowa. The bootstraps chorus has been especially loud in recent years.

So now Republicans who control the House and Senate are on the verge of making the governor’s oversimplification into the law of the land.

House File 2355, which recently passed the Iowa House, would shorten the amount of time Iowans receive unemployment benefits from 26 weeks to 16, less than all but four states. Benefits due to plant closures would shrink from 39 weeks to 26.

The bill also accelerates and shortens the time Iowans receiving benefits have to find another job. And it would force recipients to take jobs with lower pay then their previous work, from a requirement to take a job at 90 percent of their previous pay after one week to 65 percent after 18 weeks. If someone lost a job paying $45,000, in 18 weeks they’d be required to take a job paying $29,250.

A similar bill approved by the Iowa Senate would deny benefits to unemployed Iowans during the first week of unemployment eligibility.

These are unnecessary bills that won’t do much good in solving Iowa’s workforce shortage, but will create more headaches and struggles for the unemployed. Supporters claim the aim is to modernize Iowa’s unemployment system to focus on finding jobs, even though the loss of financial benefits will likely make finding a good job, and perhaps seeking needed education or training, harder.

What’s really happening is yet another effort to target constituencies Republicans don’t care much about to the cheers of conservative voters. Transgender kids, public school teachers and now unemployed Iowans are among the Iowans drawing the wrath of lawmakers.

Iowa has a safety net for the unemployed. There is no hammock. And crafting legislation based on threadbare attacks against the needy is just plain lazy.

(319) 398-8262; editorial@thegazette.com