Florida Republicans sabotaged the state’s unemployment system. Now it's unequipped to process the deluge of unemployment-insurance claims that the coronavirus pandemic has set off. EricLevitz writes
Not my sunshine. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images When Republican Rick Scott became its governor in 2011, Florida already had one of the stingiest unemployment-insurance systems in the country. As the Great Recession rained pink slips down on the Sunshine State, its laid-off workers received no more than $275 a week in unemployment benefits — a cap that had been set a dozen years earlier and never adjusted for inflation.
As a result, businesses in Florida pay an average yearly unemployment-insurance tax of $50 per employee — the lowest rate in the country, and less than one-fifth of the national average. Under ordinary circumstances, Florida Republicans might be unbothered by all this; after all, as some of them admitted in interviews with Politico, the system is doing exactly what their party designed it to do — minimize the number of jobless Floridians who can access state aid, so as to minimize business owners’ tax obligations.
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