Gavin Newsom: California Can’t Afford to Pay for Extra Unemployment Benefits

California Governor Gavin Newsom said Monday that the state could not afford to pay its share of President Donald Trump’s new expansion of unemployment benefits because it did not have the money.

The new expansion, created by President Trump in an executive order on Saturday, would provide $400 per week in additional assistance, $300 of which would come from the federal government. The remaining $100 would come from the states.

Newsom said that providing $100 per week would cost the state $700 million per week, rising to nearly $3 billion if the federal portion of the benefits were to run out of money. He said that the coronavirus aid that had already been given to the state had already been allocated to other spending priorities, and that the state did not have the money to make up the difference.

The state “cannot shoulder this burden without cutting important services,” he said.

Moreover, he said, paying an additional $100 weekly benefit through the state’s beleaguered unemployment system would also result in “time delays” and “enormous consternation” for people applying for benefits.

It was not clear whether Newsom had shut the door entirely on the expanded unemployment benefits. President Trump said on Sunday that the federal government might be able to fund the entire program.

Additionally, Newsom also said that existing state moratoria on evictions had been extended, and that the state had extended the authority of local governments to enact their own moratoria.

He also announced philanthropic contributions to the state’s efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus.

California had seen coronavirus hospitalizations fall 19% in the previous 14 days, Newsom said.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.