| Today's Feature McCune-Brooks
February Activities.
Go Red for
Women Event.
Physicians for Women’s
Health and McCune-Brooks Regional Hospital will
present the second annual Go Red event to raise
awareness of women’s health issues including
heart health on Thursday, February 4. A luncheon
seminar will be held from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at
Fairview Christian Church, 2320 South Grand
Avenue in Carthage. The event will feature
entertainment and various speakers who will
address current women’s health issues. For
luncheon reservations call 417-359-1350 or
359-1351.
Health Focus at McCune-Brooks
Regional Hospital for February is the heart. A
lipid panel will be offered in the out-patient
lab for only $18. The test measures Cholesterol,
HDL/LDL and Triglyceride levels. The test will be
offered Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 6
p.m. throughout the month. Fasting for 8 to 12
hours is required for the test. Participants may
have water only. Checks only please. For more
information, call 417-359-1350.
Payroll Taxes
Increase for Many Employers Across the U.S.
by
Olga Pierce, ProPublica
Last year Don Miller had to lay
off two of the three workers at his sign printing
business in Norfolk, Va., because of slumping
business.The cost of hiring workers for
businesses like Miller’s will be more in
Virginia this year. The average unemployment tax
increased from $95 to $171.James Hay, 70, with
his family in Roanoke, Va. Before he was laid
off, Hay was working full-time at an asphalt
factory to supplement his Social Security income,
which he says was not enough to support his wife,
granddaughter, and her two young children.Hay
holds a letter from the Commonwealth of Virginia
informing him his unemployment benefits have been
cut from $800 to $100 per month.
Last year was the worst Don
Miller had seen in more than 20 years of running
a graphic printing business in Norfolk, Va.
Business slumped 15 percent,
and he had to lay off two of the three workers
who helped him print stickers and signs for Navy
ships.
Miller hopes to bring them
back, but hiring will be more expensive for all
Virginia business owners this year. The recession
has emptied Virginia’s unemployment
insurance trust fund, and the state is making up
for it by raising taxes on employers and cutting
benefits for seniors.
In 2009, the average business
owner paid $95 per employee. This year, the tax
will be $171, according to estimates by the state
work force agency.
"It’s another added
expense to hiring somebody," Miller says.
"Everything’s going up and business is
going down."
Similar tax increases are
hitting employers nationwide this year as states
struggle to pay the 5.5 million Americans
currently collecting state jobless benefits. So
far, high unemployment and, in many cases, poor
planning have prompted 25 states to borrow more
than $25 billion from the federal government to
keep benefit checks in the mail.
In other states, unemployment
compensation funds are still in the black, but
reserves are rapidly dwindling. Nine more states
likely will be borrowing by mid-year, according
to a ProPublica analysis of state revenue and
benefits.
Tax on businesses
Business owners in 36 states
face tax increases ranging from a few dollars to
nearly $1,000 per worker. Six states are scaling
back or freezing benefits for the unemployed:
* Jobless Pennsylvania workers
will get 2.3 percent less in benefits starting
this month, while the average tax this year for
businesses will increase from $384 to $432 per
worker.
* Hawaii’s employers face
an average increase from $90 to $1,070 per
worker. The state also proposes decreasing the
maximum benefit by as much as a third —
about $190 per week.
* Texas, where the trust fund
is $1.4 billion in the red, has increased the
average tax on employers from $89 to about $165
per worker.
Instead of fulfilling the
unemployment insurance system’s purpose of
stimulating the economy, these measures may
contribute to joblessness, says Gary Burtless, an
economist who studies labor policy at the
Brookings Institution. "We don’t want
to pick this moment of all moments to boost taxes
on employers," Burtless says. "We want
to encourage employers as much as possible to add
to their payrolls."
Workers are being hurt in
another way — through benefit cuts. In
Roanoke, Va., James Hay, 70, received a letter
from the state informing him that his monthly
benefits are being cut from about $800 to $100
because state law limits payments to Social
Security recipients when the state’s fund
runs low.
"I was devastated when I
read it," Hay says. "I thought,
‘Lord, what am I going to buy heating oil
with this winter?’ "
Like many other seniors, Hay
was working full time to supplement his $1,400
monthly Social Security check, which he says was
not enough to support him, his granddaughter and
her two young children. Then the asphalt factory
laid him off.
Unemployment insurance made up
for some of the lost income, but now Hay is not
sure how his family will get by. "We’ll
just have to do whatever we can do," he
says. "I hope and pray we’ll be all
right."
States borrow
heavily
The state hopes to save about
$11 million through the cuts to seniors but
anticipates borrowing about $1.3 billion to
replenish its unemployment fund before the
recession ends.
"The middle of a recession
is when people need help most," says Maurice
Emsellem, policy co-director of the National
Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for
low-wage workers. Cutting unemployment benefits,
he says, "undermines the fundamental goals
of the program — boosting the economy and
keeping people out of poverty in an economic
downturn."
Many states such as Virginia
are already at or near the highest payroll tax
rates allowed by law, and others have pushed
politically difficult tax increases through their
legislatures, making further benefit cuts likely
if high unemployment persists, says Rich Hobbie,
executive director of the National Association of
State Workforce Agencies.
Some of the pain might have
been avoidable. Long before the recession began,
Virginia and many other states that have imposed
tax increases or benefit cuts let their trust
funds dwindle well below the 18 months of
reserves the Labor Department recommends.
Virginia had to slow its need
to borrow from the federal government despite the
impact on businesses and seniors, says Republican
state Sen. John Watkins, chairman of the Virginia
Commission for the Unemployment Insurance Trust
Fund. "I have angst for people who are
unemployed," he says. "But our trust
fund is busted — it’s gone."
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