Sen. Joe Manchin signals he won't back renewal of federal jobless aid for gig workers and long-term unemployed past Labor Day

Sen. Joe Manchin face — Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) on Capitol Hill.
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Sen. Joe Manchin indicated he would not back a renewal of federal aid programs for gig workers and long-term unemployed.
"I'm done with extensions," he told Insider. "The economy is coming back."
His opposition would effectively kill the extension of those programs set to expire on Labor Day.
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Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia indicated on Saturday he would not back including an extension of federal aid for gig workers and long-term unemployed Americans past Labor Day in a Democrat-only package.

"I'm done with extensions," he told Insider. "The economy is coming back."

Manchin went on: "Look guys, read your own print. Read your own print. The economy is stronger now, the job market is stronger. Nine million jobs we can't fill. We're coming back."

The West Virginia senator's opposition would effectively kill the renewal of those federal aid programs, given all 50 Senate Democrats need to back the party-line bill for it to clear the upper chamber. Democrats are drafting the initial bill, which will pass through the reconciliation process requiring only a simple majority vote sometime this fall.

Nearly 9.4 million people are currently receiving benefits through a pair of pandemic-era federal initiatives: Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), which expanded benefit eligibility to gig workers. Then Pandemic Extended Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) extended how long recipients could collect benefits for.

The measures were extended in President Joe Biden's stimulus law, but those are set to end on Sept. 6. A recent report from Andrew Stettner at the left-leaning Century Foundation projected that 7.5 million people would lose all their jobless aid if Congress didn't step in.

Other Democrats favor extending the programs, like Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden of Oregon. "We're gonna put out all the stops," he told Insider on Friday. "We're gonna work on filling the immediate gaps of gig workers and others."

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