1.2.5: Unemployment Compensation

Reform the unemployment compensation system.

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JOBS AND PROSPERITY PLAN: REFORMING THE UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION SYSTEM The best way to repair our broken unemployment compensation system is to make the problem of perennially high unemployment obsolete through robust economic growth. But in the meantime, 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. They depend on a system that is costly but does not actually help them get a job. It is a system in dire need of reform. Ninety-nine weeks is too long for any American to be dependent on the government. It is fundamentally wrong to give people money for 99 weeks for doing nothing. That's why we undertook and passed welfare reform when I was Speaker. It is also why I will introduce a training requirement for extended federal unemployment benefits. We can better help these Americans by requiring them to participate in real training programs in private companies, in exchange for temporary unemployment aid. Our goal is to convert the time and money now lost to a maintenance unemployment program into a human capital investment program that increases the competitiveness of the American worker in the world market in a time of dramatic scientific and technological change. This program should be delegated to the 50 states so each can experiment with the best way to use unemployment compensation as a job training program. I look forward to learning more about the most innovative state-level job-training programs, such as Georgia Works and Texas Back to Work, and hearing your thoughts about how we can create legislation to make the American workforce the most skilled and productive in the world.

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