Blog

While a college student, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham suffered the loss of his parents within a year of one another. His parents held no life insurance, but Social Security, it turns out, is America’s biggest life insurance policy. The program paid monthly benefits for the care of his younger sister until she reached adulthood. “As a 22-year-old college student with a 13–year-old sister to raise,” Graham humbly recalled, “survivor benefits meant the world to me and our family.”

The Social Security Act of 1935 also led to the creation of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program, a joint federal-state initiative to support those laid off from work. Today, many but not all of America’s 30+ million newly unemployed qualify for weekly payments from UI.

Sadly, Senator Graham seems to have forgotten the lifeline extended to him during his time of need. He said on April 28th that extending pandemic unemployment benefits past July would happen only "over our dead bodies." (His and fellow South Carolina Senator Tim Scott’s.)

Let’s hope that the rest of his Republican colleagues, who control a majority of US Senate seats, disagree.