Pending bill includes $600 per person stimulus checks
As Congress moves toward a compromise on more Covid-19 relief, Republicans are bragging they got everything they wanted, and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who held up the bill, called Democratic concessions “an unqualified victory” for his side, CNBC reported shortly past midnight on Sunday morning, December 20, 2020 (read story here).
Meanwhile, “The exact details of the agreement still need to be seen … [but] the $900 billion relief deal … is expected to include $300 per week in jobless benefits, direct payments of $600 for individuals, $330 billion for small business loans, more than $80 billion for schools, and billions for vaccine distribution,” CNN reported at the same time (read story here).
The $1,200 direct payments or “stimulus checks” distributed last spring aren’t taxable income, because technically they’re a tax credit, and this dose of so-called “helicopter money” undoubtedly will be the same.
The $900 billion of additional spending is far less than the $2.2 trillion that Democrats have held out for since August, when talks stalled, and much closer to the $500 billion spending limit that Senate Republicans wanted. Some didn’t want to spend anything to help suffering Americans. And the bill contains no aid for state and local governments, whose tax revenues have been severely impacted by the pandemic, which had been a key Democratic demand.
So Democrats gave up a lot to get this compromise, and they can’t count on adding to it when a newly-elected President and Congress take office next month, because they’ll have to flip both of Georgia’s Senate seats in next month’s runoff election, which most political observers consider possible but unlikely. A reasonable assumption is this will be all they get in more Covid-19 relief.
But even with the elections mostly over, they have more at risk. They’re probably eyeing those unresolved Georgia races — they don’t want to be blamed for denying relief to people whose unemployment benefits are about to expire or letting eviction moratoriums expire — nor do they want the Biden administration to get off on the wrong foot.
No relief bill has been passed yet as of this writing (4:25 a.m. Sunday, Washington D.C. time), but news media are indicating that passage is likely sometime Sunday.
(Update 12/20/20): The bill is set for a vote on Monday, December 21, 2020, and Huffington Post reports (here) that Democrats had to trade a tax break for business lunches (so-called “three martini lunches”) to get a tax credit for poor families.