Michael R. Strain, Columnist

How Congress Can Scale Back Unemployment Benefits

Workers will need help for a while, but $50,000 a year is too much.

June 30, 2020 at 11:00 AM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

Lining up for unemployment benefits in Kentucky.
Photographer: John Sommers II/Getty Images North America

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To help fight the Pandemic Recession, Congress temporarily made unemployment benefits more generous. Too generous, in fact. Eligible workers can receive $600 per week from the federal government on top of their regular state-provided benefit.

This program expires at the end of July. What should Congress do?