New legistlation that took effect Monday (7/1/2013) hits hard families with children who receive unemployment checks. Currently, those families get an extra $15 per week for each child. However, the new law eliminates the extra $15 per child funding.

Legislators indicate that the state must operate within its budget. It the simple financial principle of don't spend more money than you have. Actions like this have lawmakers in other states looking at Tennessee for guidance. In fact, the Volunteer State is one of the nation's most debt free states.

The question is: should state government go ahead and defy the law and pay the extra $15 per child for unemployed families, or follow the law?

And where does both the state as well as federal shares of this money come? One-hundred percent comes from taxes paid by businesses and working Americans.

Well, the fear of having federal funding cut, has forced the Tennessee Department of Labor not to act on the new law until certain issues are cleared. And in the case of this new law, we're not talking about something that impacts just a few persons. Shocking data shows that as of the first of this year, around 30,000 individuals were receiving this aide. It takes millions of tax dollars to cover that.

Currently, the first 26-weeks of unemployment compensation is paid by Tennessee, and the feds follow with an additional 37-weeks. In reality, all of that money comes from working taxpayers--a fact that is often never remembered.

Now, it's back to party bickering with some Democratic legislators accusing the State Department of Labor, under a Republican governor, of breaking its own law.

In the meantime, state leaders are seeking guidance from the federal government about what would happen if that $15 per child was removed from the unemployment checks? Until legal opinions are given and decided upon, there will be no changes.

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