For those who have been waiting for their next stimulus checks, It appears President Joe Biden is now urging Congress to expedite them. He says that there when it comes to providing Americans with financial relief from the COVID-19 pandemic, the time is now.
Immediately following his inauguration, Biden proposed his $1.9T stimulus proposal and has been pushing to gather support for it ever since.
READ MORE: NYC nursing home accused of giving veteran patients experimental virus drugs
“We don’t have a second to waste when it comes to delivering the American people the relief they desperately need,” the president tweeted. “I’m calling on Congress to act quickly and pass the American Rescue Plan.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently confirmed that the House of Representatives wants to pass the coronavirus relief bill in the next two weeks. Last week, the Senate approved a budget resolution that would fast-track the additional COVID relief with a 51-50 vote (with vice president Kamala Harris being the tie-breaker).
“It’s not yet a done deal,” said Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at Raymond James, told CNBC. “But certainly there is more unification among Democrats than I have really ever seen and a sense of urgency that usually doesn’t exist.”
“We’re looking at an early March timetable of getting something signed into law, if everything works correctly,” Mills speculated.
These checks are aimed at bringing recent direct payments to $2K in total, to supplement the $600 already authorized by Congress in December.
READ MORE: Dems to introduce $3,000 per child benefit as part of Biden relief bill
But POTUS clarified that he is open to revisiting exactly who is eligible for these payouts, explaining during an update on the economy on Friday, “We need to target that money, so folks making $300K don’t get any windfall.”
Data compiled by the New York Times says that lower-income households who received the most recent $600 check spent more money, thus stimulating the economy as the checks were designed to do, but that higher-income earners who received the checks tended to save, not spend them.
Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!
TheGrio is now on Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and Roku. Download theGrio today!