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The Republican-backed bill sailed through the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday, winning approval by a voice vote.

Wednesday's approval came after two amendments proposed by Democrats that were aimed at easing the negative effects on the unemployed were rejected. The amendments were similar to measures that also failed to gain traction in the House, which approved the bill Tuesday.

The state House on Monday night tentatively approved an overhaul of the state’s unemployment system along partisan lines after voting down a series of amendments offered by Democrats.

The bill cuts the maximum benefits paid to unemployed workers by roughly one-third, from $535 a week to $350. It also would reduce the maximum weeks of benefits from 26 to a sliding scale of between 12 and 20 weeks, depending on the unemployment rate.

Rep. Julia Howard, a senior Republican lawmaker from Mocksville and a bill sponsor, argued that passage of the bill is needed to curb benefits that have gotten out of whack and to make the state competitive in competing for industry. Read full story here.

The press conference hosted Monday afternoon by several organizations -- the N.C. Justice Center, AFL-CIO, NC MomsRising and AARP -- was held just hours before the state House is slated to consider a Republican-backed measure to overhaul the state's unemployment system. The bill, which was approved last week by the House Finance Committee, hasn't yet been taken up by the Senate.

Robert Riggins, a benefits administrator at the Freightliner plant in Mount Holly, urged legislators to try living on the lower weekly unemployment checks called for in the bill. The legislature is considering cutting the maximum benefits paid to unemployed workers by roughly one third, from $535 a week to $350.

"That bill is devastating to North Carolina families and North Carolina workers," Riggins said. Last week Freightliner's corporate parent, Daimler Trucks North America, announced that it could lay off up to 1,200 workers at its North Carolina plants in Gastonia, Mount Holly and the Rowan County town of Cleveland.

Gov. Pat McCrory pitched his pro-business agenda to a receptive audience Friday morning: the annual meeting of the Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina at the State Fairgrounds.

His remarks were bookended by standing ovations and interrupted by applause three times, as he assured several hundred in attendance that their industry represented the kind of business people that he is trying to help.

"I think they want to leave town just as soon as possible."

That was Senate Minority Leader Martin Nesbitt's parting words on Thursday, a day that saw Republicans speed-voting two major pieces of legislation toward quick approval with little public discussion.

Nesbitt, an Asheville Democrat, and Rep. Larry Hall, the House minority leader from Durham, were joined by a couple dozen other General Assembly Democrats to complain about two bills that would cut unemployment benefits and reject expanding Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act.

Picking up on a theme from last session, the Democrats said GOP committee chairs are not allowing public comment, sharing information with Democrats only at the last minute and then rushing into law bills crafted in private with help from business interests.

House Republicans, meanwhile, countered that the unemployment insurance bill has been studied and debated in the open for several months leading up to Thursday's committee meeting.

It's the first day of the legislative session and House Democrats already are raising concerns about how quickly Republicans are planning to move a controversial measure to curtail unemployment benefits as the state's jobless rate hangs at 9.2 percent.

Republicans plan to hear the legislation -- House Bill 4 -- Thursday morning, on the second day of the legislative session, with floor debate expected early next week. State Rep. Paul Luebke, a Durham Democrat, asked to push the committee meeting to next week to give lawmakers more time to consider the bill, which was filed Wednesday. "Would you consider giving us members time to read the bill, ... so we actually have time to read the bill and make comments," Luebke asked.

The General Assembly convenes at noon Wednesday, but a handful of bills have already been filed. Topics include resisting the federal health insurance exchange, not expanding Medicaid coverage, unemployment insurance and funding a western state crime lab. Here's a look at what's been filed.

Additional bills cover temporary funding for group homes, right-to-work constitutional amendment, eugenics compensation and eminent domain.

Update: The crime lab bill, sponsored by Sen. Tom Apodaca of Hendersonville, would allocate almost $18 million to build and staff a regional crime lab on the Western Justice Academy in Henderson County. Apodaca is one of the Republican leaders in the Senate, and so this bill can be considered a priority with the legislature.

Tens of thousands of unemployed workers receiving federal emergency unemployment will likely lose their benefits starting July 1 as legislators overhaul the program.

Legislative leaders said this week that they will push ahead with a July 1 start to cuts in weekly benefits for unemployed workers. The measure would put the state in violation of the recently passed federal relief package that would have provided benefits to laid-off workers through December 2013. The federal legislation specifically forbid the states from altering the weekly benefit amount, which the General Assembly is poised to do as it returns to session Wednesday.

“It interferes with our expected legislation that we already had ready to go in December. We won’t let it continue,” said Rep. Julia Howard, R-Mocksville, head of the House Finance Committee who is shepherding a bill that would overhaul the unemployment system.

SKVARLA FACES NEW QUESTIONS: Secretary John Skvarla's memo to staff at the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources this week is getting a good bit of attention and creating more questions than it answers. As reported here first, the agency's new mission statement includes this line: "environmental science is quite complex, comprised of many components, and most importantly, contains diversity of opinion." The memo also suggests the agency is more service organziation than state regulator. It raises big questions for the McCrory administration: Is climate change a scientific fact? What about sea level rise? And are human's responsible for global warming?

McCRORY DODGES GLOBAL WARMING QUESTION: As the DENR secretary questions the validity of science, the new Republican governor is sidestepping the global warming issue entirely. Pat McCrory told Travis Fain at the News & Record: "John (Skvarla) and I aren’t going to get caught up in the political semantics of either the left or the right on climate change or global warming. We believe in clean air, clean water and clean ground. ... As my father used to say ... we must walk the fine line between continuing our economic prosperity while also protecting the quality of life and the environment which brought may of us here. And that’s the fine line leadership must continue to walk.” Expect this question to re-emerge Wednesday.