- Congress failed to pass legislation to extend federal unemployment benefits on Thursday, The New York Times reported.
- The $600 weekly federal unemployment benefit will expire on Friday.
- A stop-gap measure that would have extended but slashed the benefits to $200 per week failed in the Senate, as did a broader stimulus bill that contained the $600 per week benefit.
- "We're nowhere close to a deal," Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff, told reporters on Wednesday, The New York Times reported.
- Republicans want to reduce the pandemic-related benefit to $200 a week, but Democrats want the full amount extended through January 2021.
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Congress failed to pass legislation to extend federal unemployment benefit on Thursday, The New York Times reported.
On Thursday, Senate Democrats blocked a Republican bill that would have extended federal unemployment benefits but cut the $600 a week amount to $200 through the rest of 2020.
Senate Democrats tried to pass a $3 trillion stimulus measure, which was approved in the House in May and would have included an extension on the full $600 a week benefit until January 2021. Republicans shot it down and said it was too costly and broad.
A broader stimulus package is stalled in negotiations.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told reporters on Wednesday that Democrats and the Trump administration are "nowhere close to a deal" on extending the unemployment benefit.
The $600 benefit was passed by Congress in March as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) to help those impacted by the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and will expire on Friday.
"It means enhanced unemployment insurance provisions will expire," Meadows said, according to The New York Times. That means over 17 million unemployed Americans will stop receiving the money as of Friday.
Republicans have been pushing to slash the emergency benefit down to $200 a week, claiming the larger figure has discouraged recipients from returning to work during the height of a pandemic.
However, a new study by Yale University economists found "no evidence that more generous benefits disincentivized work either at the onset of the expansion or as firms looked to return to business over time."
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