WVCBP in the News

October 20, 2021 by Sean O'Leary
West Virginia Unemployment Rate Drops to 4.6%

Huntington Herald-Dispatch - West Virginia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a percentage point to 4.6 in September, the lowest rate since August 2008. Read the full article. Total unemployment grew 1,200 over the month and the number of unemployed state residents dropped by 2,100 to 36,000, WorkForce West Virginia said in a statement.…

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October 20, 2021 by Seth DiStefano
Joe Manchin Isn’t Moved by Dem Attacks—He’s Emboldened By Them

The Daily Beast - When activists paddled their kayaks to Sen. Joe Manchin’s houseboat in Washington, D.C., earlier this month to protest the West Virginia Democrat’s opposition to a $3.5 trillion social welfare bill, what they encountered was a man very comfortable with being heckled. Read the full article. Like others who have pressured Manchin to…

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October 18, 2021 by WVCBP
House Democrat Calls West Virginia Economy ‘Irrelevant’

Yahoo News - An Illinois Democrat has been criticized after dismissing West Virginia’s economy as “irrelevant" to his party's key climate policy in the social spending package. Read the full article. The Clean Electricity Performance Program would reward utilities that adopt renewable energy sources rather than fossil fuels, penalizing utilities that do not make the transition. The…

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October 18, 2021 by Sean O'Leary
‘It’s Just Hard to Find Somebody’: Navigating Childcare During the COVID Pandemic

Jackson Newspapers - Patricia Kelly, owner of Precious Memories Kid Care, said it's always been difficult finding childcare employees, but the pandemic has made it worse. Read the full article. COVID-19 caused several of Patricia Kelly's childcare employees to leave. For some, they quit out of caution to stay safe and healthy, others were terminated because…

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October 18, 2021 by Seth DiStefano
The Money of Politics: What’s Happening in West Virginia and Washington DC

WOWK - On this week’s episode of Inside West Virginia Politics, Charleston Mayor Amy Goodwin discusses her request for a special session of the West Virginia Legislature and Governor Jim Justice’s reaction. She also talks about what the city has been doing with federal funding and how events returning to Charleston have affected the city’s…

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October 13, 2021 by Seth DiStefano
Families Benefitting from the Expanded Child Tax Credit Fear of Its loss

WOAY - A part of the American Rescue Plan, the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) program is a central source in helping with the effects of food hardship to financial instability, acting as a financial relief for working families across the country. Watch the full segment. According to the West Virginia Center on Budget and…

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October 8, 2021 by WVCBP
Sen. Manchin Should Work for Constituents

Beckley Register-Herald - In true populist form, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has said on numerous occasions that he will not vote for legislation that he cannot explain to his constituents. Such has been his approach to President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act that our senior senator wants to trim by a couple…

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September 30, 2021 by Sean O'Leary
How Gov. Justice’s Massive Transfer of Pandemic Aid to a Jobless Trust Fund Didn’t Do Much for Some WV Businesses

Mountain State Spotlight, Beckley Register-Herald - When Gov. Jim Justice announced earlier this month that he had put hundreds of millions of dollars in federal pandemic relief aid into West Virginia’s unemployment trust fund, he said it would lead to a “massive reduction” in business costs. Read the full article. But, for many West Virginia businesses,…

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September 26, 2021 by Kelly Allen
The Legislation Joe Manchin Is Holding Up Would Help His State — A Lot

Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Country Highlights - The child care center that Michelle McFall runs in Union, West Virginia, has been around for about 40 years. Just keeping it open has been something of an accomplishment. Read the full article. Union sits on the state’s hilly and rural southeastern border. With a countywide poverty rate…

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September 24, 2021 by WVCBP
Joe Manchin Might Single-Handedly Upend the Child Tax Credit

New Republic - The expanded child tax credit has been enthusiastically embraced by most Democrats as an easily promotable example of a social policy that aids families in tangible ways. On the surface, the policy would appear to be one of the few things Democrats across the ideological spectrum might agree on as they undertake the messy…

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