U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, a senior member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, on Thursday addressed the Senate and President Joe Biden, highlighting the challenges employers are facing in trying to get people back to work. The national numbers are disturbing.
She says in her travels across Iowa during her 99 county tours, she has personally seen the high number of help wanted signs along nearly every highway and main street. The statistics in her home state reflect the national trend.
What she is hearing, time and time again, from employers is that the government benefits make not working more financially feasible for too many.
“Paying people not to work is not helpful,” Ernst goes on to say. “It is delaying us from returning to normal, pre-pandemic life.” She applauds Iowa Gov., Kim Reynolds, for the steps she has taken to help solve worker shortages.
The week ending June 12 will be the last week Iowa will participate in the federal pandemic-related unemployment programs. But it is time now for the federal government to follow suit, Ernst says. She is helping to lead a bicameral effort to end the enhanced perks at the federal level with the introduction of the Get Americans Back to Work Act. The legislation will decrease extra federal unemployment benefits to $150 per week by the end of May and then fully repeal them at the end of June. “It is time for Congress, the Biden Administration and state leaders to do their jobs and get America back to work,” Ernst says.
