2011 House Bill 4408 ↩

Senate Roll Call 82: Passed

To reduce from 26 weeks to 20 weeks the amount of time a laid off employee can collect state unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, beginning in 2012, which reportedly would save the system around $240 million annually. Michigan has borrowed $3.8 billion from the federal government to pay-out benefits boosted by higher unemployment and a <a href="http://www.michiganvotes.org/2002-HB-5763">2002 law</a> that boosted benefit levels; repaying the money imposes higher taxes on employers. The bill would also retroactively include current beneficiaries under a 20 week federal benefit extension (from 79 to 99 weeks), and use money recovered from fraud investigations to pay for new fraud and overpayment prevention measures and software.