While President Biden and Democratic lawmakers are pushing to get a third round of stimulus checks, this time worth $1,400, out to Americans, almost 60 congressional Democrats have a different idea: they want to give every American a stimulus check every month until the pandemic is over.
The effort is being spearheaded by Democrat Ilhan Omar, Representative of Minnesota’s 5th congressional district, reports CBS News. She, along with 55 other House Democrats, signed a letter sent to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris yesterday urging that more needs to be done to help struggling Americans. While Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package would give every American another one-off $1,400 stimulus check, Omar and the other Democratic representatives say it’s not enough.
“One more check is not enough during this public health and economic crisis,” the letter states. “Many families cannot afford to wait for eight months between payments. To truly build back better, families need stability and certainty through ongoing relief—they cannot be at the mercy of Congressional gridlock.”
It continues:
Any relief package must include recurring cash payments that:
- Continue until the economy recovers with equal payments to adults and dependents,
- Prioritize those who need it most and will spend it the quickest,
- Go to all immigrant workers, refugees, and their families (both Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) filers and mixed- status households),
- Include older dependents such as disabled and elderly dependents and those over the age of 16 still claimed as dependents,
- Add improved administrative outreach and communication at the state and local level to ensure families are aware of payments, and
- Ensure the Internal Revenue Service makes automatic payments available to all eligible households with better outreach to individuals left behind in previous rounds, including the underbanked and unbanked through pre-loaded Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards and those who had erroneous, delayed, or missing payments through improved casework assistance.
The letter itself doesn’t specify how much each monthly recurring stimulus check should be for, but in a tweet sent yesterday, Omar said, “$2,000 monthly payments until the pandemic is over.”
$2,000 monthly payments until the pandemic is over. https://t.co/6tuia6prFJ
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 28, 2021
It goes without saying that most Americans would probably love the package laid out in Omar’s letter to become law, yet given that Democrats have just a hair-thin majority in the Senate, and Biden is having trouble getting GOP support for his existing $1.9 trillion COVID-19 plan, Omar’s and the other House Democrats’ plan would likely have an even tougher time gaining the needed GOP support.
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