Special Message to the Congress on Extending Unemployment Compensation Benefits.

To the Congress of the United States:

I recommend to the Congress the enactment of legislation to provide for the temporary continuation of unemployment compensation benefits to otherwise eligible individuals who have exhausted their benefits under State and federal laws. I believe that these workers and their families should be enabled temporarily to receive weekly benefits for a longer period than is now in effect so that in the current economic situation they and their families can obtain a greater measure of security.

These recommendations reflect my strong conviction that we must act promptly, emphatically and broadly to temper the hardship being experienced by workers whose unemployment has been prolonged. They also reflect my conviction that the need for additional assistance to these workers will be of relatively brief duration.

Such legislation should not encroach upon the prerogatives which belong to the States, and matters of eligibility, disqualification, and benefit amounts should be left to the States. The legislation should provide, however, for the payment, to individuals who have exhausted their regular unemployment compensation benefits, of temporary benefits for an additional period equal to one-half of the duration of their regular benefits.

The State Employment Security agencies and the Railroad Retirement Board would administer the program. The Government would be reimbursed for the costs incurred by it for this program in each State through an increase, four years after the program's end, in the tax payments to the Federal Government by employers in that State under the Federal Unemployment Tax Act. Any State, however, that wished to avoid an increase in such tax on the payrolls of employers within the State, could provide for reimbursement to the federal Government either by direct appropriation or by authorizing transfers from its credit in the Unemployment Trust fund.

The temporary federal assistance which this program provides, while of great immediate benefit, is in no sense a substitute for extending the coverage of unemployment compensation which I have previously recommended, or for appropriate State action extending the duration of benefits and increasing benefit amounts which I have previously urged upon the States.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER