You hear and see their stories every day. Stories of millions of Californians who were laid off because of the pandemic-caused shutdown of the economy over the last 5 months.

To lose your job on top of having to deal with the fear and worry over the virus responsible for it, is hard enough.

But story after story of these millions of out of work workers who have had to wait for their unemployment benefits, with many still waiting for them, have revealed how unprepared government leaders were for an unprecedented emergency like the coronavirus.

People calling California's Employment Development Department or EDD, hundreds of times, to finally get through. The agency saying their current wait time to call back people who are applying is four to six weeks.

It wasn’t until last week that the governor announced a strike team to address the issues with the system and to speed things up.

Now more than half of the members of the state legislature are calling on the governor to immediately begin paying unemployment benefits to more than one million laid off workers who have yet to get anything.

And in Washington, Republicans and Democrats are stalled over what they all say they want to do, but haven’t done, despite weeks and weeks of arguing about it:A new bill to help out of work Americans.

While work on a vaccine for the virus continues, maybe we can find a cure for all these problems that are making it worse for millions of people.

(Photo credit Getty Images)

Cliff Notes on the News

About Cliff Notes on the News