President Biden has released the proposed Fiscal Year 2025 Budget. See Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2025 (whitehouse.gov)
The Budget narrative provides for increases in funding for integrity measures, continued focus on reemployment and equity. The budget describes the UI related initiatives in the proposal below.
Modernizes, Protects, and Strengthens UI. The UI program provides a critical safety net for workers who have lost a job through no fault of their own and helps protect the economy as a whole from further damage during downturns. The Budget invests $3.5 billion, an increase of $313 million above the 2023 enacted level, to modernize, protect, and strengthen the UI program. This includes investments to tackle fraud and support more robust identity verification for UI applicants. Further, the Budget proposes a comprehensive legislative package designed to provide States with new tools and resources to combat UI fraud and improper payments while ensuring equity and accessibility for all claimants. The Budget also includes principles to guide future efforts to reform the UI system, including improving benefit levels and access, scaling UI benefits automatically during recessions, expanding eligibility to reflect the modern labor force, improving Federal and State solvency through more equitable and progressive financing, expanding reemployment services, and further safeguarding the program from fraud.
It is encouraging that there is a continued focus on integrity measures after the end of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The attack on the UI system was so dramatic and the amount of fraud and theft was so great that decision makers now recognize the urgent need to properly fund UI integrity and to improve the security of the UI system. Legislation in the House (HR 1163) and the Senate (S 1587) has included new integrity related measures that UWC supports. The Senate Finance Committee Chair (Wyden – D-OR) and Ranking Member (Crapo – R-ID) have released a framework for UI that also includes improved integrity measures.
The details of legislative language in the President’s proposal are not yet available. We are reviewing the proposed budget with key legislative staff in the committees with jurisdiction. We expect that greater detail will be provided in the USDOL presentation at the National UI Issues conference on June 26th in Spokane, Washington.
UWC has supported increases in funding for effective integrity measures and improvements in the UI system. We have also supported improvements in methods used to assist unemployed workers in seeking employment and collaboration with employers to connect workers to jobs in demand in the labor market. We are hopeful that bi-partisan legislation to address these issues may be possible by the end of 2024.
