$600 Stimulus Check Is Coming

After another grueling 9 months Congress has finally agreed on a second relief package. Your $600 stimulus check is coming.

Just when will aid start to arrive? We are not sure. But Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said, “I can get out 50 million payments really quickly, a lot of it into people’s direct accounts.” This would be similar to how quickly they distributed funds after the CARES Act was passed in March 2020. 

And just like with the first unemployment stimulus money those with direct deposit will see the funds first. Quite possibly starting as early as the week after Christmas. 

Can $600 Really Get you Through?

For those who are unemployed, and have been for a greater portion of 2020, the answer is an overwhelming, ‘NO!’

It has been more than 9 months since the first $600 relief aid was sent out. I bet you have been able to make that stretch until now. Well if you haven’t then you must not be able to appropriately budget. Certainly nothing like the United States government. 

At the writing of this column the US Debt Clock showed the current debt at:

We should recover from this real soon. (Insert sarcasm here). Keep in mind the CARES Act in March had a price tag of $2 Trillion.

No worries though, this December stimulus package is a much less 900 Billion.

What’s In The Stimulus Package?

As before, the bill has $600 direct payments to most adults and $600 per child. 

If you make more than $75,000 individually or $150,000 as a couple then expect less. 

There will be more aid available to small businesses and unemployment benefits will be extended. 

President Donald Trump would need to sign the bill but it is unlikely that he would veto such a bipartisan effort. Although there are scores of Americans calling for a veto in view of the massive pork stuffed into the bill.

It was more than 5,000 pages in length and Congress had all of 2 hours to read it. 

President-elect Joe Biden called the stimulus package a ‘good start.’ But keep in mind this is a guy who has trouble reading from a teleprompter, deciphering his wife from his sister, and has a checkered past in ripping off political speeches from other politicians and plagiarizing in law school. 

And his son Hunter? CNN asked politely if I would not mention him. It’s just ‘Russian disinformation.’

And no worries, while your government is taking care of you with a whopping $600, they packed this bill with money heading outside of our borders:

• $130 million to Nepal
• $135 million to Burma
• $85.5 million to Cambodia
• $700 million to Sudan
• $1.4 BILLION to something called the “Asia Reassurance Initiative Act”

A Slap In The Face

This is all just a gigantic slap in the face. Especially to those that have lost a business or a job to the lockdown catastrophe. 

Congressional politicians make $174,000+ and have not missed a single paycheck.  Think there would have been a bill sooner if they were involved? You betcha! Faster than Nancy Pelosi can get her done and eat a pint of gourmet ice cream. And that’s fast!

They have also mostly stayed at home for the past 9 months. The hardest part of their job has been to slather on some make up or shave and shower for the 10 a.m. zoom call with CNN.

$600 is an equivalent to the sucker the bank teller used to give you when you were a kid.

A kind gesture that will last all of 10 minutes.

UPDATE

Below is an address that President Trump delivered to the American people from the White House on Dec. 22 urging Congress to reconsider the package essentially stating he would veto the bill as it is.