How Trump’s unemployment boost is unequal across states

President Donald Trump declared three weeks ago that he was going to “take care” of jobless Americans with an executive order giving them a $400 weekly boost in their unemployment benefits. But when workers receive the new payments — and the amount they’re getting — is varying widely by state.

The uneven distribution of the aid is the result of politics and outdated computer systems. Some governors have hesitated to apply for the money, criticizing the program as too expensive because states must contribute $100 toward each payment. Other states are taking the money, but they say they need more time to get their archaic computers to spit out the checks.

The money’s supposed to be a stopgap as Congress remains stalled over whether to restart payments of $600 in extra federal benefits that expired July 31. The new program got a cold reception from states and unemployment experts who warned the system would be difficult and time-consuming to put into place. But with Congress at an impasse over how much unemployment aid to provide in the next pandemic relief package, some states like Florida have decided to move forward and apply for help despite initial hesitations about how the program would work.

Here’s how the patchwork implementation of Trump’s “Lost Wages Assistance” program is affecting workers:

Some workers are already getting paid.

So far at least 42 states have applied to the federal government for the money and 32 have been approved. The funds come from a $44 billion pool of disaster relief aid that’s doled out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But only four states say they’ll be paying out the benefits by this week.

Unemployed workers in Arizona started getting benefits on Aug. 17, just two days after FEMA approved the state’s application to the program. And laid-off Texans were issued their first checks with the extra $300 on Sunday. Since that time Texans have received $424 million in benefits from the Lost Wages Assistance program, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.

Still, not everyone’s getting the money in those states. Trump’s order stipulated that workers must receive at least $100 a week in benefits to be eligible for the extra payments. That rule excludes 347,700 Texans from the program, the commission said.

Missouri and Louisiana also say they’re expecting to start sending out checks this week.

Some will need to wait at least a few weeks — or longer.

States including Alaska, Maine, Georgia and Mississippi say they’re reconfiguring their computer systems to handle the new payments, a process that will take anywhere from a couple of weeks to more than a month, depending on each state’s capacity to program often-outdated systems that have already been strained by historic levels of unemployment.

Other states, like Alabama, are still waiting for the money to come through from FEMA before they start sending out checks.

Utah, Rhode Island, Kentucky and Connecticut are hoping to start paying out the money by mid-September. California says it will start shelling out the benefit sometime next month. Colorado, Indiana, Maryland and Oklahoma are aiming to begin sending checks toward the end of September.

Alaskans could be waiting into October. The state was approved to participate in the new program on Aug. 23, but eligible Alaskans will have to wait six to eight weeks, Cathy Muñoz, deputy commissioner of the state’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development told POLITICO.

Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, New York, Montana, Iowa, New Mexico, Idaho, Washington and Michigan have all applied for the benefits, but haven’t released dates when they expect to begin sending out the checks.

Not everyone will get $400.

States have the option of using their state unemployment benefits — which a worker would be receiving anyway — to cover the cost of the $100 that they are supposed to contribute. That means a large swath of workers will only see their benefits payments increase by $300.

Other states, like Kentucky and Montana, are using federal emergency coronavirus aid money allocated under the CARES Act to cover their share of the cost, so workers will see a full $400 increase.

In Vermont, where the state government expects to start paying out the benefits “in the coming weeks,” Gov. Phil Scott has requested $20 million from the state legislature so the state can add the full $400 to each benefits check.

As more states start paying benefits, the money will run out more quickly.

The amount of funding available from FEMA to cover the benefit is limited — and the more states that apply, the more quickly the pot will run out. Experts predict the funds will be exhausted in five weeks.

At least 10 states — West Virginia, Illinois, Nevada, Delaware, Oregon, Virginia, Florida, New Jersey, Ohio and Wyoming — have applied for the program but have not yet been officially approved.

FEMA is trying to ration the $44 billion pool of disaster relief money by initially awarding states the benefits for three weeks. After that, the states will receive the federal share of the payment on a “weekly basis” to ensure that "funding remains available," the agency said.

Some states may never make the payments.

More than a dozen states and U.S. territories haven’t applied for the program yet. Their main concern is how to pay for their $100 share of the extra benefits.

While states can use CARES Act funding to pay for their $100 portion, some cash-strapped state governments have been holding on to that money, hoping that Congress will provide them with the flexibility in the next aid package to plug budget holes caused by declining tax revenues. Other states are already struggling to pay out their regular state jobless benefits, and have had to borrow from the U.S. Treasury.

The nonpartisan National Governors Association has expressed concern about “the significant administrative burdens and costs” Trump’s program places on states.

State officials say they also are concerned that Congress will eventually restore the original $600 extra weekly benefit in another pandemic aid package, creating a potential accounting nightmare for the states to clean up.

Anna Gronewold, Katy Murphy, Gary Fineout and Katherine Landergan contributed to this report.