Complicating coronavirus stimulus is the last thing struggling unemployment offices need

You’re reading the Our View, one of two perspectives in Today’s Debate.

For the Opposing View, read “Unemployment $200 bonus is still generous without discouraging people to go back to work.”

As the White House and Congress haggle over a new coronavirus relief measure, a key sticking point is what to do about the $600-a-week federal payments to tens of millions of unemployed workers.

The supplemental payments, approved earlier this year, expired last week. House Democrats want to extend them through January, which might be too much for too long. And congressional Republicans? Well, they've found a way to combine the GOP's reputation for callousness with the Democrats' proclivity for convoluted Washington-knows-best solutions.

Under the GOP proposal, the supplemental federal payments would be cut to $200 per week initially. This reduction would come despite the fact that COVID-19 is running wild in places, and the economy is weakening. After two months, the $200 per week would shift to a figure that would vary from person to person and would be based on what it would take to replace 70% of a worker’s lost income. That would require state employment offices to calculate the exact income of each person who applies for relief.

What COVID-19 exposes

State employment offices are already overwhelmed and are struggling to keep up. When the shutdowns first went into effect, virtually every state was hit with a wall of applicants and some, like Florida, reported horror stories of people waiting months for their checks.

Things have gotten somewhat better but are far from perfect. Just this week, Washington state announced it had worked its way through its initial backlogs but is still taking multiple weeks with the many applications coming in since mid-June.

The pandemic has exposed the need for states to upgrade their computer systems and hire more people to process jobless claims. Even so, the last thing deluged state agencies need in the throes of a crisis is a mandate to create new databases and calculate every applicant's income and benefit.

The calculations would be especially difficult for the self-employed and so-called gig workers, who collect revenue from multiple sources, much of which may be lacking documentation. Because of the peculiarities of how states are to do the calculations, workers in some states would get less than their peers in similar conditions in other states.

Unemployment vs. living wages

Republicans say $600 a week is simply too much and discourages some people from returning to work. There is truth to that. When $600 is added to state unemployment checks, many Americans are collecting more to stay home than they would if they returned to work, which could indicate that they were not being paid living wages to begin with.

Democrats have a point saying that the coronavirus pandemic is still terrorizing the United States — thanks in no small measure to the Trump administration's incompetent response — and so pushing people back to work might not be such an ethical idea.

One solution might be weekly payments that start at $600 but uniformly decline across the board over time on the presumption that the economy will improve. Alternatively, payments could start at the full amount but be pegged to the unemployment rate.

Instead, Republicans have proposed a perpetual motion machine. They give states two months to update their systems and figure out how to do the computations. In the likely event that states can’t meet that deadline, they could get another two months. By that time, the supplemental benefits would be about to expire.

This approach is way too complicated. When you are relying on rickety state unemployment insurance systems to distribute jobless benefits in the midst of a pandemic, the best approach is KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

To read more editorials, go to the Opinion front page or sign up for the daily Opinion email newsletter. To respond to this editorial, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

If you can't see this reader poll, please refresh your page.

HOTLINE: Share your coronavirus story. We may publish your comments.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus stimulus: Keep federal unemployment benefits simple