8/13/20 update:
Yesterday was yet another difficult day for negotiations of the new stimulus package.
In fact, as negotiations collapsed, President Trump casted doubt on the entire process announcing that the deal is “not going to happen.”
“The bill’s not going to happen, because they don’t even want to talk about it, because we can’t give them the kind of ridiculous things that they want that have nothing to do with the China virus,” Trump said during a news briefing.
These comments came just hours after discussions took place between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
These discussions reportedly did not make any significant headway and appeared to be just another day of little to no progress.
It’s obviously not encouraging to hear the president now proclaim that the bill is not going to happen but I think many people still think something will be passed at some point.
Personally, this does not worry me that much because I have long suspected that we were in for a difficult and lengthy political battle for this last round of stimulus funding.
So in many ways this is playing out just as expected.
As for the comments that another stimulus package is not going to happen, it sounds to me that Trump is just speaking in extremes/absolutes like he is known to do, perhaps trying to shift blame and apply pressure to Democrats to get them to do something.
So while the language from Trump is definitely not encouraging, I would not completely lose hope in another stimulus package and more stimulus checks at this point.
Original article:
Here’s what we know.
The Democratic-backed HEROES Act and the Republican-proposed HEALS Act both contain another round of $1,200 payments for millions of Americans.
The White House has also expressed support for an additional round of direct payments, specifically supporting the HEALS Act proposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Under these acts, Americans earning $75,000 or less will be sent the full $1,200 payments. For those making between $75,000 and $100,000, those payments will be phased out.
A big change is that dependents over the age of 17 will qualify for the $500 bonus payment allowing many families to receive more stimulus funding this go around.
The big problem is that the proposed stimulus checks are part of the fifth stimulus package proposal to help aid in this time of the pandemic.
So we likely won’t see more stimulus checks until we see an entire package approved and that is proving to be very problematic.
Despite lawmakers having months to get negotiations going and have something ready to go by the self-imposed deadline of August 7, lawmakers were still not able to come to an agreement.
There is a huge disagreement over the overall price tag of the next stimulus package.
Democrats initially proposed a package around $3 trillion while Republicans went with a package close to $1 trillion.
Reportedly, Democrats are willing to knock off 1 trillion if Republicans come up by 1 trillion but that doesn’t seem to be working.
“We’ll take down a trillion if you add a trillion,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday. “They [Republicans] said absolutely not.”
Meanwhile, it looks like the White House is more interested in a compromise and has even stated that they would like to get that done this week.
“If we can get a fair deal, we’re willing to do it this week,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC on Monday.
Getting a deal done this week would mean that stimulus payments could start going out at the end of this month or perhaps the beginning of September.
It seems like most lawmakers are still hopeful about getting an agreement made but there have been a lot of comments that suggest lawmakers are pretty far away from reaching a middle point which is a little concerning.
The good news is that stimulus checks are already pretty much a lock at this point and so it is just a matter of working out the other details.
Those details have been somewhat complicated by President Trump signing executive orders and memorandums but hopefully lawmakers can get things figured out soon, since signing executive orders for more stimulus checks would most likely be illegal.
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Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.