When the Iowa Legislature reconvenes for the start of the 2022 session, one Republican lawmaker sees two major topics that will be tackled.

District 24 Senator Jesse Green says one of those major topics is unemployment reform. He points out that currently the state requires someone to only do two work searches to qualify to receive unemployment benefits and Governor Reynolds wants that to be increased to four. Another issue is the work search requirements, which is currently over 20 in order to qualify for unemployment. Green says the main issue with unemployment is indexing how many weeks someone can apply for unemployment, which is currently 26 weeks. He lays out different scenarios where less number of weeks would be more appropriate.

“So when you’re in an environment where you have lots of jobs out there and low unemployment rate, then you might only have 12 weeks where you could be receiving unemployment benefits. Let’s say you’re in a terrible economic situation and a high unemployment rate that number might go up to say 26 (weeks) where it’s currently at now. The states that have done this have saved so much money by doing it this way, and have seen so many positive results.”   

Green notes another major topic is tax cuts, specifically to income taxes. He says there is over $1 billion of surplus money, which he believes will allow them to continue to reduce the income tax rates for Iowans, just like they did last year by cutting two-percent from the highest income tax bracket.