{"id":26489,"date":"2021-02-04T17:30:10","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T17:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/basicincometoday.com\/?p=9843"},"modified":"2021-02-04T17:30:10","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T17:30:10","slug":"how-congress-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-start-disbursing-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/04\/how-congress-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-start-disbursing-cash\/","title":{"rendered":"How Congress learned to stop worrying and start disbursing cash"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The $1,200 Covid-19 stimulus checks last year were a breakthrough in US policy \u2014 and may signal a new course for US politics.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Dylan Matthews<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Biden administration and its allies in Congress are pushing for a new\u00a0round of $1,400 checks to all but the richest Americans<\/a>. If you\u2019ve been following the ins and outs of Covid-19 relief politics in recent weeks, this isn\u2019t surprising news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But consider what a dramatic transformation of American politics this represents. The first $1,200 checks that were sent out as part of a massive relief package in early 2020 were\u00a0genuinely unprecedented in American history<\/a>. The US has issued refunds for taxes paid in the past, and those refunds\u00a0sometimes looked a bit like unconditional checks<\/a>, as in 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The $1,200 checks were not refunds. They were just checks, and they were available even to low-income Americans with low or no tax burdens.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

These checks were the closest the US, or most other rich countries, had ever come to trying a\u00a0universal basic income<\/a>. By\u00a0one estimate<\/a>, 93 percent of Americans got money from the program, which offered benefits to, say, a family of four as long as they earned under $218,000. \u201c93 percent basic income\u201d is not quite universal basic income, but it\u2019s not far off, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

March 2020 was a strange time when it felt like the world as we knew it was collapsing, so it was natural to think this would be a one-off policy. But it wasn\u2019t. Democrats in Congress pushed for more cash in the spring and summer. So did President Trump and some\u00a0Republicans like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)<\/a>\u00a0late last year. The result was a surprising second batch of stimulus checks:\u00a0$600 in cash<\/a>\u00a0sent to most adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the wake of the December stimulus bill\u2019s passage, Trump expressed his preference for an even bigger $2,000 check, a target enthusiastically embraced by Democrats in Congress. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riding that momentum, Biden and his allies in Congress are trying to send out $1,400 checks to reach that $2,000 goal. Meanwhile, progressives are pushing the administration to support even larger checks \u2014 not just $1,400 to top up the $600 from December, but a full $2,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever the final figure ends up being, it\u2019s worth stepping back to appreciate just how much the politics of giving people money has shifted in the past year. Sending cash is\u00a0hugely popular<\/a>\u00a0and has become the subject of mass public attention in a way that\u2019s rare for legislative proposals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late December,\u00a0Google search interest in the $2,000 checks exceeded interest<\/a>\u00a0in the Kardashians or Taylor Swift.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cash\u2019s bipartisan popularity, and its ability to muster large-scale public interest and support, suggests that the future might involve a lot more policies like checks \u2014 even when the pandemic has passed. Covid-19, in other words, may have done what years of basic income advocacy could not do on its own: convinced our political class that handing out cash is a good, popular, economically effective policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than that, the surprising embrace of checks by some Republicans suggests that the tax cut-centered right-wing politics that emerged in the Reagan era may be waning. If slashing rates is replaced in the Republican toolkit with handing out checks, that\u2019s a win for basically everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The self-sustaining politics of checks<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a great bit in the pilot episode of\u00a0The Carmichael Show<\/em>\u00a0where Jerrod Carmichael\u2019s dad, played by David Alan Grier, confesses that he voted for George W. Bush in 2004. His liberal Black family is shocked and horrified. But his explanation is simple: Bush gave him a\u00a0check in 2001<\/a>. \u201cHe sent me that stimulator check. No president ever sent me $1,600. Nobody ever sent me $1,600. You can bomb whoever you want long as you send me $1,600.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) holds a mock tax refund check while speaking in support of President George W. Bush\u2019s tax cut plan in 2001.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know how common a reaction that was to the 2001 tax cut checks (which were more\u00a0like $600<\/a>\u00a0for married couples). But Grier\u2019s character\u2019s reaction gets at the heart of why checks have taken off this year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Members of Congress often act, in the words of political scientist\u00a0David Mayhew<\/a>, as \u201csingle-minded seekers of reelection.\u201d There are lots of ways to get yourself reelected, but wouldn\u2019t sending your voters money be the simplest way of all?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congress does all kinds of other giveaways, of course, from the mortgage interest deduction for the affluent to the earned income tax credit for the working poor. But they tend to be relatively complex and buried in the tax code, where it\u2019s hard for voters to know who, exactly, in Congress made this help for them possible. Why not simplify it dramatically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years I\u2019ve been\u00a0somewhat baffled<\/a>, as a writer on social policy, that this logic hadn\u2019t taken off more. Examples like Bush\u2019s 2001 refunds were rare; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) tried a similar approach with his \u201csales tax rebates<\/a>\u201d for families with kids in 2018, but the amounts were paltry, at just $100 per child. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seemed like there was a strong taboo against simply attempting to send money to voters, as evidenced by the\u00a0criticisms that Walker was engaged in \u201cvote buying\u201d<\/a>\u00a0by introducing his refund plan in the months leading up to his election.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That changed last year. The $1,200 checks included in the CARES Act in March \u2014 which were\u00a0much more universal, especially at the low end, than Bush\u2019s 2001 refund<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 were sufficiently popular that a groundswell of support built up for subsequent rounds. They were so popular, in fact, that they overshadowed every other aspect of the US\u2019s fiscal response, including the similarly unprecedented\u00a0$600-per-week boost to unemployment insurance<\/a>\u00a0payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A common genre of viral tweet in 2020 involved insisting that $1,200 was all the US did for people, usually while exaggerating what other countries did (by, say, insisting Canada gave everyone $1,433 a month when it just did so for unemployed people, to whom the US gave at least $2,400 a month):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Australia: $1,993 a month

Canada: $1,433 a month

Denmark: Up to $3,288 a month

France: Up to $7,575 a month

Germany: Up to $7,326 a month

Ireland: Up to $1,793.44 a month

UK: Up to $3,084 a month

USA: $1,200 to last 33 weeks and counting<\/p>— The Matt Skidmore Show (@ZachandMattShow) November 19, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote>