N.C. governor Pat McCrory stokes conservative fantasies about the sneaky, slimy, migratory poor:
"We had the ninth-most-generous unemployment compensation in the country," McCrory said. We were having a lot of people move here, frankly, from other areas to get unemployment ... People were moving here because of our very generous benefits, and then, of course, we had more debt."
WRAL.com fact-checked this statement and found nothing in it- expect maybe some stormy weather emerging from the governor's bum:
The call: North Carolina's own rules prohibit people who have not worked in the state from tapping the state's unemployment insurance system, and economists say there's scant evidence for people moving across state lines for any work-related reason, much less because they're comparison shopping for unemployment insurance.
WRAL.com puts it in simple language for the governor:
... the easiest way to think about this is someone would have had to work in the state for around six of the last 15 months in order to be eligible for benefits. The amount of someone's benefit is governed by how long they worked and how much they made. Although the recently passed unemployment insurance reform bill changed the amount of benefits paid, it did not significantly change the five-quarter base period definition.
In other words, you can't simply move to North Carolina, announce that you're unemployed, and sign up for lavish weekly unemployment checks. This is the kind of fever-swamp nonsense imagined by people who have never had to accept unemployment compensation.
Governor McCrory is apparently ignorant of his own state's laws.
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