It's been a week since the White House and Congress allowed federal unemployment benefits

to expire.

Democrats want to extend the $600 a week in Jabba's A through January.

Republicans are divided on what the New Coronavirus relief package should look like, and have proposed

cutting payments to $200 a week.

As members of Congress fight it out in Washington, 30 million unemployed Americans are struggling

to get by.

That's clear in Stockton, California, a city of around 300,000 people.

Because of the pandemic, the unemployment rate rose to more than 17% by May, nearly triple

what it was at the start of the year.

Many of those people qualified for that weekly $600 check from the federal government, and

with the median salary in Stockton around $46,000 a year, a lot of people stood to make

more money on unemployment than they did in their jobs.

That's true all across the country.

One early study out of the University of Chicago estimated that two out of every three people

who qualified for the federal unemployment bump would make more money than their regular

jobs.

So when Republicans argue that it's time to reduce those federal benefits, they point to

all those people and say, well, where are the incentive to work?

We also intend to continue some temporary federal supplement to unemployment insurance,

while fixing the obvious craziness of paying people more to remain out of the workforce.

Small business owners across the country have explained how this dynamic is slowing,

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