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Liz Pancotti

Lobbyist

Type
Person
Role
Lobbyist
Updated

The profile

Economic-policy analyst whose March 20, 2020 plan for Employ America asked states to replace 100% of lost wages for most unemployed workers. A week later Congress chose a flat $600 weekly supplement.

Identity and role

Elizabeth "Liz" Pancotti is an economic-policy analyst in Washington. The Economic Speakers Bureau lists her as managing director of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative. Before that she was director of special initiatives at the Roosevelt Institute. As an adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders she was labor policy director of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and a senior budget analyst on the Senate Budget Committee. Earlier she was policy director at Employ America, where, her Roosevelt biography says, she focused on unemployment insurance during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from American University.

Pandemic-relief role

Pancotti's March 20, 2020 guide for Employ America, "Unemployment Benefit Expansions: A Guide for Policy Responses in the Wake of COVID-19," laid out what states and Congress could change. It noted that unemployment claims had risen by 70,000, or 33%, in the week of March 8 to 14. Most states paid benefits for at most 26 weeks, so a worker laid off that week would run out in mid-September. Its recommendations:

  • extend the maximum number of benefit weeks, through a federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program like the one used after the 2008 crisis, or by states acting alone;
  • drop the one-week waiting period, which at an average benefit of about $400 cost a family of four "about two weeks of groceries or 1/3rd of their monthly rent";
  • raise replacement rates, which typically ran at about 50% of prior wages under weekly maximums from $235 in Mississippi to $790 in Washington. "States should temporarily increase replacement rates to 100% for the bottom 75% of earners," she wrote, with a $1,500 weekly maximum;
  • expand work-sharing programs so workers on reduced hours could collect partial benefits.

The CARES Act, approved on March 27, 2020, took a different route to higher benefits: a flat Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation payment on top of state benefits, $600 a week in the spring of 2020. GAO puts total federal spending on that supplement at $442 billion through May 31, 2023, and estimates fraud across all pandemic unemployment programs at $100 billion to $135 billion.

Their own relief

No PPP or EIDL loan, grant or other relief payment to Pancotti appears in the public record.

No criminal charge, civil enforcement action or fraud finding involving Pancotti appears in the public record.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

The Economic Speakers Bureau listing gives her post as managing director of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative and quotes her April 2026 comments on a year of tariffs.

Sources

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