{"id":22108,"date":"2021-02-01T10:14:10","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T10:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/02\/gop-survival-checks-republicans-stimulus-coronavirus-congress\/"},"modified":"2021-02-01T10:14:10","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T10:14:10","slug":"republicans-are-trying-to-gut-the-next-round-of-covid-19-relief-checks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/01\/republicans-are-trying-to-gut-the-next-round-of-covid-19-relief-checks\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans Are Trying to Gut the Next Round of COVID-19 Relief Checks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Republican senators are offering a new COVID-19 relief framework that would limit survival checks to $1,000 and cut off aid to millions more Americans \u2014 and President Joe Biden seems open to some of the GOP\u2019s restrictions.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n Sen. Mitt Romney heads to the floor of the Senate on January 26, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Samuel Corum \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

A group of Republican senators is pushing to cut the size of the next round of COVID-19 relief checks and significantly limit who\u2019s eligible to receive the payments, as the Biden administration continues to indicate that it would be open to further restricting who\u2019s eligible for survival checks.<\/p>\n

Last month, President Joe Biden\u00a0promised that $2,000 checks<\/a>\u00a0would \u201cgo out the door immediately\u201d if Democrats managed to win the two Georgia senate runoff races and claim control of the Senate. After Democrats pulled off two miracle victories in Georgia, Biden quickly\u00a0narrowed his pledge<\/a>\u00a0to new $1,400 checks, asserting that the $600 checks authorized by Congress in December were a down payment on his plan.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, ten moderate Republicans proposed new $1,000 checks instead as part of their own scaled-down coronavirus relief package. Under their proposal, survival checks would go to far fewer Americans than in previous relief bills \u2014 only to \u201cfamilies who need assistance the most,\u201d according to\u00a0a letter<\/a>\u00a0they sent to the White House.<\/p>\n

While the details haven\u2019t been released yet, one Republican involved in the effort, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio,\u00a0told CNN<\/a>\u00a0on Sunday that direct payments should only go to individuals earning less than $50,000 and families earning less than $100,000.<\/p>\n

In previous COVID-19 relief bills, full rounds of survival checks have gone to individuals earning up to $75,000 and couples earning up to $150,000. Limiting assistance the way Portman described would cut off relief to millions of Americans who have previously received economic impact payments.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

\u201cWe\u2019re Open\u201d<\/h2>\n \n

Republicans\u2019 insistence that relief checks go only to poorer Americans is a relatively recent objection.<\/p>\n

At least two Republicans involved in the new effort, Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana,\u00a0cosponsored<\/a>\u00a0a standalone bill last summer that would have sent out $1,000 checks using the\u00a0same income thresholds<\/a> as the COVID-19 relief legislation<\/a>\u00a0passed by Congress in December.<\/p>\n

Just a few years ago, Senate Republicans passed a tax overhaul specifically\u00a0designed to benefit<\/a>\u00a0the wealthy and slash the corporate tax rate.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0early reporting<\/a>\u00a0suggests<\/a>\u00a0that Democrats are unlikely to go along with the new proposal from moderate Republicans, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia helped kick off the push for limiting payment eligibility,\u00a0repeatedly<\/a>\u00a0insisting<\/a> that new rounds of relief checks be more targeted even though the payments have been means-tested all along.<\/p>\n

Biden, meanwhile,\u00a0indicated<\/a>\u00a0last week that he would be open to setting new income limits for the checks, and National Economic Council director Brian Deese\u00a0reiterated<\/a>\u00a0on Sunday that the White House is open to changing the income caps.<\/p>\n

When CNN host Dana Bash pressed Deese to say whether the administration will \u201ctarget those $1,400 checks,\u201d Deese responded: \u201cYes, on the $1,400 checks, we are open to looking at how to make the entire package effective at achieving its objective, including providing support to families with children, providing direct child tax credits to families that have children and who have been hit the hardest in this crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Bash again asked whether the White House wants checks to see checks be \u201cmore targeted to the people who need them most and not go to people who aren’t going to spend them,\u201d Deese replied: \u201cWe’re open to that idea. We’re open to ideas across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein has publicly\u00a0pushed back<\/a> against the idea of further means testing the checks. Bernstein said last week that the checks are “better targeted than I think most people realize” and explained \u2014 because this somehow has to be said \u2014 that “it’s not just people at the bottom who need the money.”<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

Elite Media Preaching Austerity<\/h2>\n \n

The push to limit eligibility for COVID-19 survival checks was initially sparked<\/a>\u00a0by discredited austerity economist Larry Summers and the editorial boards employed by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Mike Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

Their campaign was boosted by a\u00a0questionable<\/a>\u00a0economic analysis released last week suggesting that middle-income Americans don\u2019t need money because they didn\u2019t immediately spend the $600 checks that Congress sent out in December.<\/p>\n

The study by economists at Opportunity Insights \u2014 a Harvard think tank\u00a0funded by the family foundations<\/a> of billionaires Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Bloomberg \u2014 found that higher-income households will only spend about $45 of the $600 checks within the first month of receiving them.<\/p>\n

The economists suggested that new COVID-19 relief payments should be limited to individuals earning less than $50,000 and couples earning less than $75,000 \u2014 a proposal that would make about half of all US households ineligible for survival checks, according to census data.<\/p>\n

The study was favorably cited in a series of purportedly objective news articles and opinion columns arguing that survival checks should be more limited.<\/p>\n

\u201cCutting off stimulus checks to Americans earning over $75,000 could be wise, new data suggests,\u201d one Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0headline<\/a>\u00a0read. \u201cIt\u2019s not progressive to give money to the rich,\u201d Post<\/em> columnist Catherine Rampell wrote. Of course, Post<\/em> owner Bezos is one of the richest men in the world and has seen his net worth\u00a0nearly double<\/a>\u00a0during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg News<\/em>\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cBiden\u2019s stimulus risks giving money to people who won\u2019t spend it.\u201d The piece failed to note the\u00a0organizational and financial ties<\/a>\u00a0between Mike Bloomberg\u2019s philanthropy and Opportunity Insights.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg\u00a0money manager<\/a> Steven Rattner, who\u00a0agreed to pay $10 million<\/a>\u00a0a decade ago to resolve claims he paid bribes to score state pension business, wrote a New York Times<\/em>\u00a0column<\/a>\u00a0arguing that the Biden stimulus plan isn\u2019t \u201cwell targeted to help the neediest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite data showing that the survival checks are\u00a0distributed more fairly<\/a>\u00a0than other popular programs, Rattner cautioned that \u201csome\u201d of the spending in Biden\u2019s plan \u201cwill go to workers in the top 10 percent \u2014 hardly a struggling group of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of Republican senators is pushing to cut the size of the next round of COVID-19 relief checks and significantly limit who\u2019s eligible to receive the payments, as the Biden administration continues to indicate that it would be open to further restricting who\u2019s eligible for survival checks. Last month, President Joe Biden\u00a0promised that $2,000 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1649,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22109,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22108\/revisions\/22109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}