Three-hundred and fourteen dollars.

If you’re an Indiana resident, that’s your share of the state’s unemployment insurance debt. The state has borrowed almost $2 billion from the federal government, and the first payment on nearly $100 million in interest comes due in September.

As Indiana lawmakers boast about the state’s business climate and even consider a decrease in the corporate income tax rate, they continue to burden residents with debt accrued because the General Assembly has failed to do the right thing in raising taxes and reducing benefits paid from the unemployment insurance fund. They must not adjourn without a solution.

A hearing today in the Employment, Labor and Pensions Committee represents the latest attempt to address the gaping deficit. Rep. Dan Leonard, R-Huntington, is author of HB1450, which leaves the maximum weekly benefit at $390 while adjusting it to 47 percent of the unemployed worker’s average weekly wage. The change is estimated to reduce spending on benefits by 25 percent.

An additional $6 million in savings is estimated from a provision that would prohibit workers from collecting benefits in the event of a planned shutdown by the employer.

The bill also creates a surcharge on employers equal to 13 percent of the unemployment insurance fund contribution. It is expected to raise $90 million this year. States cannot use regular unemployment insurance taxes to pay the interest on federal borrowing.

The surcharge isn’t unique – 22 states already had an interest assessment in their laws, according to the National Employment Law Project. Pennsylvania, where workers pay into the trust fund along with employers, just activated its dormant “interest tax” to cover borrowing costs.

The bill represents a painful but necessary response to the state’s neglect of its unemployment insurance trust fund. Indiana went into the recession in the worst possible shape, paying out more in unemployment insurance benefits than it was taking in from businesses. The structural imbalance caused the fund to topple quickly. Indiana was among the first of the 30 states to require a bailout, in December 2008.

The remedy might not be so painful today if lawmakers hadn’t delayed an increase in employer-paid premiums approved in 2009. They made a poor bet that the federal government would continue to withhold interest charges, as it did with stimulus act money.

“(W)e don’t want to be in the position of raising taxes and killing jobs and then have the federal government step in and forgive the loans,” then-House Republican Leader Brian Bosma said a year ago.

Now, as House speaker, Bosma is leading the charge for a constitutional convention to address irresponsible spending at the federal level, citing a bailout of the auto industry as an example.

But what’s good for Washington must apply to Indianapolis, as well. The General Assembly must meet its responsibility to fix the insolvent unemployment insurance fund and pay off its obligations to the federal government.