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90_HB1088eng
New Act
Creates the Re-employment Support Program Act. Creates a
program similar to the Unemployment Insurance program, to be
administered by the Department of Employment Security and
funded with appropriations from general revenue funds of the
State, for employees who lose their job for reasons other
than misconduct, are ineligible for Unemployment Insurance,
and would be eligible for the Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families (TANF) program created by the federal Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of
1996. Funds used shall qualify for the State's maintenance
of effort requirements under the TANF program. Eligibility
for benefits shall be determined in coordination with the
Department of Human Services.
LRB9003716SMdv
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1 AN ACT regarding support for unemployed persons.
2 Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
3 represented in the General Assembly:
4 Section 1. Short title. This Act may be cited as the
5 Re-employment Support Act.
6 Section 5. Findings and purpose.
7 (a) Families, children and the State of Illinois all
8 benefit when families are able to support themselves through
9 work. Work keeps the poorest families from needing welfare.
10 The encouragement and promotion of work is a high priority of
11 the State.
12 (b) Many poor workers who support families lose their
13 jobs from time to time for reasons other than misconduct
14 connected with work. It is important to help these families
15 become re-employed quickly and reduce the time that they
16 spend between jobs.
17 (c) The Unemployment Insurance program is designed to
18 help workers quickly locate new jobs, replace workers' wages
19 during the period between jobs so that their families can
20 stay out of poverty, conserve workers' basic assets (such as
21 home, car, and modest savings), and keep workers connected to
22 the labor force and off welfare. The Unemployment Insurance
23 program has been effective in accomplishing these results for
24 the workers who qualify for it. When a worker receives
25 Unemployment Insurance after losing a job, the worker's
26 family is far less likely to fall into poverty than if the
27 worker did not receive Unemployment Insurance.
28 (d) Because of rules that limit workers' eligibility for
29 Unemployment Insurance, many workers who lose their jobs for
30 reasons other than misconduct connected to the work do not
31 qualify for Unemployment Insurance when they lose a job. A
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1 large majority of poor workers, particularly single mothers,
2 do not qualify for Unemployment Insurance. Many of these
3 working poor mothers have had to seek help from the Aid to
4 Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program to sustain
5 their families when they are between jobs. It is
6 significantly harder for a person receiving AFDC to become
7 re-employed than it is for a person receiving Unemployment
8 Insurance. For many workers, the desire to "stay off
9 welfare" is a motivating factor in their efforts to become
10 re-employed.
11 (e) AFDC is being replaced in Illinois by the Temporary
12 Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Under federal
13 TANF rules, persons may receive TANF benefits for a maximum
14 of 60 months in a lifetime. A working poor parent who is
15 forced to sustain her family with TANF benefits during
16 periods between jobs could exhaust her lifetime TANF benefits
17 while she still has young children. The worker would then
18 have no means to sustain the family between jobs. The family
19 would be forced to quickly deplete its assets (such as home,
20 car, and modest savings) and would incur serious risk of
21 falling into the deepest poverty, making it even harder for
22 the worker to become re-employed.
23 (f) For these reasons, the preferred re-employment
24 strategy in Illinois is Unemployment Insurance. The
25 Unemployment Insurance program, however, is funded by a
26 special tax on employers, and it is not likely to be expanded
27 enough to cover as many workers as need it, especially poor
28 workers supporting families. It is not the purpose of this
29 Act to undermine, replace, state an opinion about, or
30 otherwise affect the Unemployment Insurance program itself or
31 the processes in place for funding, amending, and operating
32 it.
33 (g) The purpose of this Act is to expand the coverage of
34 the re-employment strategy exemplified by the Unemployment
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1 Insurance program through creation of the Re-employment
2 Support program, to be funded with general revenues. The
3 Re-employment Support program is to be operated by the
4 Department of Employment Security side-by-side with the
5 Unemployment Insurance program. The Re-employment Support
6 program is to serve workers who do not qualify for
7 Unemployment Insurance, for reasons other than misconduct
8 connected with work, and who would otherwise likely resort to
9 the TANF program to sustain their families while they search
10 for re-employment. The intent is to facilitate early
11 re-employment for workers and reduce TANF usage in the State.