'Over our dead bodies:' Lindsey Graham vows Congress won't extend additional $600 coronavirus-related unemployment benefits, as U.S. death toll crosses the 60,000 mark

• Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said that he and his colleague Sen. Tim Scott would allow a $600 per week pandemic unemployment benefit to extend past July "over our dead bodies."
• Graham and Scott appeared at an April 29 meeting for accelerateSC, the governor's task force dedicated to reopening the state's economy during the coronavirus crisis.
• The CARES Act provides three types of coronavirus-related unemployment benefits, including an additional $600 per week in funds for people who are unemployed because of the coronavirus known as Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, or FPUC.
• Graham and Scott argued that giving people increased unemployment benefits would incentivize them to stay home rather than return to work, therefore slowing South Carolina's economic recovery.
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South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said that Congress would only extend a $600 unemployment benefits provided in the CARES Act "over our dead bodies" after its July expiration.

His remarks came the day that the United States passed 60,000 deaths caused by the coronavirus, by far the greatest reported death toll in the world.

The senator made the remarks while appearing on an April 29 panel for accelerateSC, the coronavirus task force created by Gov. Henry McMaster to examine ways to revitalize the state's economy. He was joined by his fellow Republican senator from South Carolina, Tim Scott.

"I promise you over our dead bodies will this get reauthorized," Graham said of himself Scott's opposition to government spending on unemployment. "We've got to stop this. You cannot turn on the economy, until you get this aberration of the law of fixed."

The CARES Act, passed by Congress in late March, provided emergency benefits to Americans who had lost their job because of the coronavirus outbreak. The law includes "Pandemic Unemployment Compensation" funds (FPUC), which grant people $600 per week on top of their regular unemployment benefits until July 25. Separately, the law also bolsters unemployment funds issued by individual states and makes more people eligible for the benefits.

Under regular circumstances in South Carolina, unemployment insurance lasts up to 20 weeks, and the average weekly benefit amount is $236. The maximum benefit is $326. In South Carolina, people who lost their jobs because of the coronavirus through no fault of their own are eligible for all three types of CARES Act expanded unemployment benefits.

Proponents argued that the funds were necessary to shore up Americans' finances after social distancing and stay-at-home orders closed non-essential businesses, causing widespread job losses and furloughs. Roughly 30 million people have filed for unemployment over the last six weeks.

Healthcare experts have warned that social distancing measures will need to remain in effect, to some degree, for several months, and may need to be loosed or tightened depending on the state of the outbreak. Americans to a large extent are still being urged to work from home whenever possible, and not to travel for work unless they are an essential worker.

But Graham and Scott believed that these additional unemployment benefits would incentivize people to stay at home rather than return to work, to the detriment of small business owners.

"The goal is to help people who are unemployed, to make sure that if they get unemployed, they'll have their income intact, but it was never our goal to pay people more to be out of work than at work," Graham added during a question-and-answer session, arguing that "if a person is making $23 an hour on unemployment it's going to be hard to get you go back to work for $17 hour job."

"If your job is available to you please go back, the economy needs you back," Graham said.

Scott said he had spoken to employers in South Carolina who said they had difficulty bringing people back to work because they couldn't "compete" with the unemployment stipends.

"Bringing those folks back to work is creating frustration among their employees," Scott said. "The tension is real."

Graham said he and Scott would oppose any extension of the additional unemployment benefits in upcoming legislation considered by Congress.

"I will never let this happen again with my vote," Graham said.

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