A bill continues to be worked on in the Iowa Legislature that would make changes to current unemployment benefits.

District 24 Senator Jesse Green of Boone says the law allows for individuals to apply for unemployment up to 26 weeks and lawmakers are looking to reduce that to just 16 weeks, which is also what Governor Kim Reynolds wants. He points out the Senate is advocating for a one week waiting period before people can collect unemployment, which is something the House was initially against.

“The reason that we want it in the Senate is because we saw a report that showed that $87 billion last year was given out in fraudulent payments. The vast majority of those fraudulent payments were from that first week. Not having a waiting period to make sure that all the ‘I’s” were dotted and the “T’s” were crossed and everything was good to go with those.”

Green notes the recent unemployment data showed that there were 85,000 jobs available in Iowa and 67,000 people were unemployed. So Green believes the argument that there aren’t jobs available for those individuals on unemployment is not true. He is confident the bill will move to the governor’s desk to be signed into law.