- People’s general understanding up to this point about President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan is that it will give them a new stimulus check for $1,400.
- Some people have criticized Biden’s stimulus plan for not delivering on the $2,000 stimulus checks that were promised on the presidential campaign trail.
- A new analysis of the plan, however, argues that it will actually put much more than $1,400 into many Americans’ pockets.
When it comes to the $1.9 trillion economic rescue plan that President Biden has proposed which includes benefits like funding to provide most Americans with a new stimulus check, Democrats have been in something of an awkward spot when it comes to messaging related to the stimulus bill.
Last month, then-President-elect Biden promised Georgia voters that if they sent two Democrats to Washington DC in that state’s high-stakes runoff election, $2,000 stimulus checks would “go out the door” immediately. Just imagine, Biden encouraged Georgia voters during one campaign event, what that “will mean to your lives — putting food on the table, paying rent, paying your mortgage, paying down the credit card, paying the phone bill, the gas bill, the electric bill.” Except, well, not only have those stimulus checks not gone out the door as promised, but they also won’t be for $2,000, either. Democrats’ awkward messaging has shifted to — well, when you include the $600 checks from the Trump administration at the end of his term, added to the new $1,400 checks Biden has promised, that’s $2,000.
Along these lines, meanwhile, the Biden administration received a bit of help in making its case for the stimulus plan this week from a left-leaning nonpartisan think tank called the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. An analysis from this entity analyzed the Biden plan as well as related proposals from the House Ways and Means Committee and found that, rather than simply providing the poorest Americans with $1,400 stimulus checks, Biden’s coronavirus-related stimulus proposal would actually give them $3,600 in total financial aid.
According to the institute, the 20% of Americans who make less than $21,300 a year would receive $3,590 from the Biden plan, on average. That’s from a combination of the $1,400 stimulus checks as well as expansions of the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Remember when Biden was elected and we'd have checks out the door?
February is half over and my back account is looking suspiciously like there isn't a stimulus in it.
— Nikola Tesla (@Maybe_Im_Cody) February 13, 2021
Along these same lines, both of those newly minted Democrat Senators from Georgia — who ended up winning their runoff races — tried to reframe people’s expectations about their stimulus checks during a press conference with Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer a few days ago. “Sen. (Rafael) Warnock and I are here to deliver for Georgia families who are counting on us for aid during this pandemic,” Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff said. “This bill will send $8,200 in new federal financial support to an average working family of four in Georgia while we invest massively in vaccines and the health response to end this pandemic.”
