TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Conservative Kansas legislators are trying to tamp down fears about the cost and other potential problems with their proposal to provide unemployment benefits to workers who lose their jobs for refusing COVID-19 vaccines.
The GOP-controlled Legislature is expected to consider the measure during a special session that convenes today, along with another proposal that would make it easier for workers to claim religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The measures are responses to vaccine mandates from President Joe Biden covering more than 100 million American workers.
The push for unemployment benefits for vaccine-refusing workers comes after GOP lawmakers worried for months that the depletion of funds to pay claims last year during the pandemic would force an increase in the state tax that finances the benefits. There’s bipartisan concern that the unemployment proposal before lawmakers now could lead to such a tax increase.
