Berger backs BIGGER unemployment checks

The de facto leader of the NCGOP is defying his party’s national fervor for cutting spending and waste.

State senator Phil Berger, his chamber’s president pro tem, has made it clear he’s forsaking the idea of creating a better environment for employment for simply jacking up the state’s monthly unemployment benefit payments:

Increasing the amount of unemployment benefits received bipartisan support in a North Carolina House committee on Tuesday, and the Senate leader also agrees an increase is needed. Raising the level of unemployment benefits is “something that we need to do,” Senate leader Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, told reporters on Wednesday. Berger leads a Republican supermajority in the Senate, and his support of proposed legislation greatly increases the chance of it becoming law.

Berger didn’t commit to the $100 weekly increase that was in a House bill that passed that chamber’s finance committee, which would mean someone could receive up to $450, rather than $350, a week if they lost their job through no fault of their own.

“I do think we need to raise it,” he said. “We need to look at the actuarial stuff and figure out where we are. We got ourselves into a real pickle back in the recession, the 2008-2009 recession. We clearly don’t want anything that comes close to repeating that. So we’ll have to be careful about what we do.”

The state’s unemployment insurance fund has a balance of $5 billion, a major increase over the $1 billion it had after the recession, when North Carolina and other states had to be bailed out with federal loans. House Finance Senior Chair Julia Howard, a Mocksville Republican, initially proposed raising the unemployment cap amount to $400 a week, and agreed with Democratic Rep. Deb Butler’s amendment to increase the benefit in House Bill 48, if it becomes law, to $450. It was a rare win for Democrats on the committee, who all voted in favor along with all the Republicans. Republicans have a majority in the House. […]

Throwing money at people is a GREAT way to win their love. But, in case you haven’t noticed, we are in the midst of an economic mess. 

It was just months ago that Berger was talking to the press about refunding a “revenue surplus” to North Carolina taxpayers.  You get those surpluses by taxing people too much.  (What happened to all that?)

If you get out in the real world, you’ll come across a lot of business people who will tell you that — since the COVID lockdown — it has been tough to hire help.

Politicians approved so many new benefits – and jacked up so many existing ones — that it became a better deal for many to simply sit home on the government dole and DO NOTHING than to get back out there and break a sweat.

A DOGE-style effort at the state level could do wonders for creating a better cost-of-living and doing-business.  We’ve got all kinds of bloated state agencies distributing money like confetti at a parade.

State government is getting a piece of the action when it comes to the lottery AND all of that new gambling Uncle Phil and his portly step-son Jason Saine brought us.

We’ve got one of the highest state gas taxes in the nation.  In the end, we all pay a piece of the cost of transporting stuff to market.  We’ve got Republicans showing a lot of love to costly solar and wind energy mandates.  That’s all very trendy.  But it adds untenable costs to powering our homes and businesses and makes many of the things we need, produce, and / or services we provide  or use unnecessarily more expensive.

The alleged conservative party in this state COULD take steps to shrink government, the cost-of-living, and the cost-of-business.  But, no.  Raleigh is all about servicing the deep-pocketed lobbyists. They’re all about adhering to the Berger machine’s goals of accruing bureaucratic power and monetizing said bureaucratic power (for themselves, friends, and family).

Raleigh needs to pay closer attention to DC on stuff like this.  Maybe it’s going to take Elon and the gang coming down here and doing the job FOR THEM.