Economic Recovery After the Pandemic
Floor Speech
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Mr. BUDD. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend and colleague, Congressman Cawthorn, for organizing this.
Last month, the NFIB, or the National Federation of Independent Businesses, reported that 48 percent of small businesses currently have unfilled job openings, and that is an all-time high. Right now--you have heard the number mentioned--9.3 million jobs remain unfilled nationwide.
This sluggish recovery is a direct result of the Federal Government paying people not to work. Essentially, the Federal enhanced unemployment benefit constitutes a ``stay-at-home'' bonus for millions of people.
Instead of following the lead of dozens of other States, North Carolina's Governor refuses to end this very backwards incentive.
That is why I introduced a solution that would help. It is called the Back to Work Bonus Act. First and foremost, my proposal would end the $300 Federal unemployment bonus on day one.
Second, the bill would allow a new worker to receive a $900 back-to- work bonus only if they get back in the workforce and stay on the job for at least 4 weeks.
Now, to be clear, someone would only receive these dollars if they not only accepted the job offer, but fully went back to work.
Third, I want to highlight that this legislation is a specific solution to what we hope is a temporary problem, using already appropriated funds that would expire on August 14.
Look, we simply can't continue to pay people to stay at home. For workers that stayed in the workforce throughout the pandemic, we need to cut their taxes, so they get to keep more of their hard-earned money.
We need to get the economy booming again, like it was during the Trump years. We need to stop the overspending in Washington that causes inflation to soar and eat away at a family's buying power.
But above all, our number one priority needs to be getting folks back to work as quickly as possible. There are just too many opportunities out there, 9.3 million of them, to be exact. So let's get America back to work.
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