WASHINGTON, D.C. — One of the many debates on Capitol Hill right now is over that $600 per week in federal unemployment benefits you’ve been receiving if the coronavirus has you out of work.

Currently, that federal “financial bump” is set to expire at the end of July.

“It’s not like hundreds of thousands of Ohioans are getting called back to work,” Senator Sherrod Brown said in a virtual interview on July 2. “Some are, but a whole lot aren’t and can’t find jobs. And if we’re going to say to them, ‘Sorry, we’re not going to continue unemployment,’ I just think that’s a bad, bad policy.”

Brown (D-Ohio), like most Democrats, wants the increased benefits to be extended for at least the rest of the year since the pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon.

But Republicans are increasingly worried that more benefits could mean some people abuse the system.

“When you have $600 a week from the federal government, on top of what the state unemployment already is, in some cases that can cause a disincentive,” Representative Steve Chabot (R, 1st Congressional District) said in an interview on June 24.

Fellow Ohio Republican Rep. Bill Johnson (R, 6th Congressional District) had similar concerns.

“My business owners are very, very concerned about people that want to stay on the unemployment and make more not working than they can afford to pay them in wages,” Johnson said in an interview on July 1. “So, it’s important to get our economic flywheel going again.”

The Labor Department announced Thursday that another 1.3 million Americans filed for unemployment for the first time last week — 33,000+ of them are from Ohio.

Even though parts of the Buckeye state have been reopening, COVID-19 numbers are going back up, and Democrats say Congress will have to do more.

“We can’t just let people fall off the edge, you can’t do that because that’ll make the situation worse,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D, 9th Congressional District) said in an interview on July 1. “We have to keep consumer spending up in the economy, and that’s what a federal government is for.”

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has proposed a “return-to-work bonus” that would offer people more money for safely returning to their job instead of continuing to receive the increased unemployment benefits.

But the reality is not every job will be available by the end of July, so some Republicans told me a compromise might be needed.

“If the reason they don’t have their job is related to COVID, we need to consider that,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R, 2nd Congressional District) said in an interview on July 1.

In a separate interview that day, Rep. Steve Stivers (R, 15th Congressional District) added: “I would like to see us do something to help people that are chronically unemployed, but I’m not sure it needs to be that kind of guaranteed plus-up regardless of your income, or any of that.”

Congress returns to session on Monday, July 20. It’s not yet clear if a compromise between both parties will be reached.