NASHVILLE – Tennessee Democratic lawmakers are blasting Gov. Bill Lee’s plan to end the federal government’s $300-a-week unemployment benefits paid to thousands of jobless workers early as “immoral” in light of the Republican governor’s new proposal to use $44.6 million in other federal funds to boost payments to 1,125 small businesses that have suffered during the coronavirus pandemic.
“In Gov. Lee’s mind, $300 a week of federal assistance for a parent who lost their job is bad, but millions worth of federal assistance for business owners is good,” charged Sen. Heidi Campbell, D-Nashville, who went on to call it “an immoral double standard.”
Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga, said that despite Tennesseans “still hurting,” Lee “has lost sight of who he represents. Tennessee is not strapped for money. We have money oozing, with the federal monies coming in, oozing all over the place. There’s no reason that both [jobless Tennesseans and businesses] cannot be taken care of.”
The governor is defending ending the additional federal benefit for tens of thousands of jobless workers and self-employed Tennesseans on July 3, even as he advocates for his newest proposal, arguing among other things that “work is good for the soul, it’s good for families, it’s good for Tennessee.”
“One of the things that we have worked really hard to do during the pandemic is to make sure that livelihoods are maintained, and the best way to do that is to make sure that the companies that Tennesseans work for are able to continue to operate,” Lee said.