His solution to the problem: cut the time to file an appeal in half.
In other words, make it harder for people to appeal, the aim being, unstated, but still, to cut down on the number of appeals.
That’s genius, pure genius.
A bill approved by a House of Delegates subcommittee would give unemployment claimants and employers 15 days, down from the current 30, to appeal decisions from the VEC.
The only way this can work to reduce the backlog, currently at 96,000 appeals that are pending, is akin to the old “Saturday Night Live” skit about a bank that didn’t do anything but make change for customers.
Asked how the bank could turn a profit, the CEO in the skit answered, deadpan: “volume.”
Here, the VEC is hoping, obviously, that the reduction in the number of days that people can file appeals will lead to a reduction in volume.
Anything else they’re saying, like, for example, what VEC Commissioner Carrie Roth told the House subcommittee – “The impetus behind this is to make sure we give them a very timely final decision in an expedited fashion” – is Orwellian doublespeak.
And yet still, Republicans on the subcommittee, in voting to advance the bill, blamed the backlog on the Northam administration.
News flash: Youngkin’s people have been in charge for a year now; they own it now.
Another way to approach this, and this is just a crazy idea, I know – but how about giving the VEC more resources, in the form of more people, to work through the appeals?
Yeah, I get it, more people means more money, and Youngkin is trying to push a billion-dollar tax cut through the General Assembly, because he thinks he can be president, and he seems to think this tax cut idea is central to that effort.
As a result, we get these dumb ideas dressed up as genius, like so much lipstick on a pig.
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Chris Graham
