Shrunken Government
After years of cutting the budgets to government agencies set up to help people, at some point the government stops being helpful. That point is being reached pretty quickly, and has arrived for the California agency responsible for unemployment benefits, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times.
In January, with the unemployment rate nearing 6%, nearly 12.6 million calls were placed to the state's toll-free phone number to apply for unemployment insurance benefits. But more than three-fifths never got through.
Some applicants quoted in the article had to dial forty or fifty times, frustrated by busy signals or disconnections, before finally getting through. Some even tried navigating the EDD's web site to file their claims, but had pretty much the same experience.
But filing an Internet application is no panacea, cautioned Thom Davis, business manager for Local 80 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees in Burbank. "It doesn't work so well either. The servers get so clogged up and it freezes," he said.
The Employment Development electronic filing system is "very un-user friendly," said John Hillman, a call-center worker in San Francisco. Many e-filers get confused and make mistakes that disqualify their applications. They wind up getting back on the phone and "causing high call volume."
Now, keep in mind that unemployment benefits are not exactly a free ride or government give-away program. It's an insurance program, and the premiums are paid by workers via payroll deductions which are matched by their employers. I've paid into the California program for over 35 years, and I'm not exactly an exception.
So, what's the problem?
Well, the federal and state governments have cut funding for the agency administering the program. Gov. Schwarzenegger has imposed a hiring freeze of sorts, so the beleagured EDD is operating with fewer people than it needs, especially as the employment picture worsens in the state. The head of the agency, fully aware of the backlog, has begun approving overtime to the employees at the call centers, but in the long run, that's going to be too expensive to maintain.
Like the federal agency responsible for processing the applications for citizenship, the EDD has been caught flatfooted. It can't deal with the volume. Who could have imagined that a $3 trillion war, a housing bubble, and sky rocketing fuel prices would result in a worsening economy?
And who could have imagined that downsizing that part of the government set up to assist people would ever have caused this kind of problem?
If the results of the last 7+ years weren't so intentional and so tragic, it would make a great Monty Python sketch.
In January, with the unemployment rate nearing 6%, nearly 12.6 million calls were placed to the state's toll-free phone number to apply for unemployment insurance benefits. But more than three-fifths never got through.
Some applicants quoted in the article had to dial forty or fifty times, frustrated by busy signals or disconnections, before finally getting through. Some even tried navigating the EDD's web site to file their claims, but had pretty much the same experience.
But filing an Internet application is no panacea, cautioned Thom Davis, business manager for Local 80 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees in Burbank. "It doesn't work so well either. The servers get so clogged up and it freezes," he said.
The Employment Development electronic filing system is "very un-user friendly," said John Hillman, a call-center worker in San Francisco. Many e-filers get confused and make mistakes that disqualify their applications. They wind up getting back on the phone and "causing high call volume."
Now, keep in mind that unemployment benefits are not exactly a free ride or government give-away program. It's an insurance program, and the premiums are paid by workers via payroll deductions which are matched by their employers. I've paid into the California program for over 35 years, and I'm not exactly an exception.
So, what's the problem?
Well, the federal and state governments have cut funding for the agency administering the program. Gov. Schwarzenegger has imposed a hiring freeze of sorts, so the beleagured EDD is operating with fewer people than it needs, especially as the employment picture worsens in the state. The head of the agency, fully aware of the backlog, has begun approving overtime to the employees at the call centers, but in the long run, that's going to be too expensive to maintain.
Like the federal agency responsible for processing the applications for citizenship, the EDD has been caught flatfooted. It can't deal with the volume. Who could have imagined that a $3 trillion war, a housing bubble, and sky rocketing fuel prices would result in a worsening economy?
And who could have imagined that downsizing that part of the government set up to assist people would ever have caused this kind of problem?
If the results of the last 7+ years weren't so intentional and so tragic, it would make a great Monty Python sketch.
posted by Diane at 4:17 AM
2 Comments:
"If the results of the last 7+ years weren't so intentional and so tragic, it would make a great Monty Python sketch."
You're right. Our entire government has been turned into The Ministry of Silly Walks. And people's lives and well-being depend on that.
"$3 trillion war, a housing bubble, and sky rocketing fuel prices would result in a worsening economy?"
Well at least now we finally have a proper answer to question, "War what is it good for?"
Though I guess "absolutely nothing" has a better ring than "government debt and troubled economy"
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