One of the underlying issues that surfaced during our nation’s response to this economic crisis is the need to overhaul our outdated unemployment insurance systems. Given the central role that state-run systems play in providing aid to families and the economy during downturns, these changes cannot come soon enough.

When crafting the original CARES Act in March, lawmakers wanted to provide the unemployed with 100% of their pre-coronavirus wages, since the massive job loss was the result of our purposely putting much of the economy into a deep freeze as a necessary means of fighting the pandemic. But this proved much more complicated than expected due to decades-old unemployment insurance systems and varying state benefit formulas. Thus, the CARES Act included a weekly $600 bonus as a means of jury-rigging a fix to try to bring benefits up to 100% of lost wages.