- Wondering when your new $1,400 stimulus check will arrive as part of President Biden’s $1.9 billion COVID relief bill?
- The timetable for when this third round of coronavirus relief payments will be sent out is starting to come into focus.
- The stimulus checks are now expected to go out in March, at the earliest. Also, this round may include the final coronavirus stimulus check we receive during the pandemic.
This week, the second impeachment trial of President Trump is an all-consuming force in Washington DC, with House Democrats who are leading the prosecution against Trump introducing never-before-seen footage of the January 6 riots at the US Capitol complex. No surprise, this has brought other business, at least in the Senate, grinding to a halt — and that’s unfortunate news for anyone who’d been hoping for a new stimulus check this month.
In terms of where things stand right now, lawmakers are in the final stages of hammering out the details of President Biden’s new $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan. It’s a massive piece of legislation that will represent Biden’s first significant domestic achievement, packed as it is with everything from tens of billions of dollars in funding to expand coronavirus vaccine distribution and testing to funding in support of a third wave of stimulus checks, this time for $1,400. Part of the impetus in trying to rush a new round of the direct COVID relief payments out the door is just that, the rush. They’re needed right now, urgently, to stimulate the economy, which begs the question: When can you expect your new stimulus check to arrive?
Here’s our best guess — you should set your expectation for sometime in March, at the earliest.
That’s because Democrats seemed to have resigned themselves to the inevitability that Biden’s economic rescue plan will need to be passed via a process called reconciliation. Without getting too deep into the minutia of what that means, it basically makes it possible for the bill to be passed with a simple majority vote — whereas other bills need to garner a supermajority of votes to survive the possibility of a filibuster. The reconciliation process, though, means the bill will be able to be passed much sooner than it otherwise would.
Just In: House Dems have released their bill text for the 3rd round of stimulus checks.
$1,400 payments (including $1,400/child, so family of 4 would get $5,600)
Individuals earning up to $75,000 and married couples earning up to $150,000 get it
Can use 2020 or 2019 income pic.twitter.com/NFzO1cOKqN
— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) February 8, 2021
“We’re looking at an early March timetable of getting something signed into law, if everything works correctly,” Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at financial services company Raymond James, told CNBC. “It’s not yet a done deal. But certainly there is more unification among Democrats than I have really ever seen and a sense of urgency that usually doesn’t exist.”
Equally important — while we should never say never, since politics is anything but a predictable business, Mills also suspects that this will be the last stimulus check we receive. Maybe ever, if not at least for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. Experts like him think stimulus legislation will be much more targeted going forward, as needed. “For individual assistance, this is very likely the last major package,” he told CNBC.
