Financestimulus

$1,000 or $1,400 stimulus checks? Here’s what is being floated in Congress

Anne SradersBy Anne Sraders
Lance LambertBy Lance Lambert

Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing President Joe Biden’s new $1.9 trillion relief bill that would send $1,400 checks to most Americans. But Senate Republicans, wary of the large price tag, are proposing their own plan roughly one-third the size.

A group of 10 Republican senators released an approximately $618 billion relief proposal Monday that includes $20 billion for vaccines, $300 per week enhanced unemployment through June, and another $50 billion for small businesses. Notably, the plan includes funding for a $1,000 stimulus check—down from the $1,400 checks being pushed by the White House.

According to the GOP’s plan, the $1,000 checks would start to phase out for individuals making $40,000 per year and completely cut off for those making $50,000 per year. For joint filers, those limits would begin to phase out from $80,000 per year with a $100,000 cap. The plan would also include $500 per adult dependent and child.

To be sure, both parties have discussed targeting this round of checks to those in financial need, and President Biden expressed openness to negotiating such changes. (The first round of stimulus checks in 2020 completely phased out checks for individuals earning above $99,000, and joint filers with no children at $198,000.) The Republican group will meet with President Biden later on Monday to lobby their plan.

However, the White House seems set on a bigger deal: “With the virus posing a grave threat to the country, and economic conditions grim for so many, the need for action is urgent, and the scale of what must be done is large,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Sunday.

Indeed, last week, Democrats signaled they are moving forward to pass another package.

With Republicans likely to oppose parts of the bigger relief bill, Democrats seem poised to pass it through budget reconciliation, which only requires 51 votes versus the 60 normally required for passage to avoid a filibuster. Given the Democrats’ incredibly narrow majority in the Senate (a 50-50 split with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote), virtually every Democratic lawmaker would have to get on board.

But it still appears it’s the Democrats holding the cards. “Democrats have significant leverage on fiscal relief,” Raymond James Washington policy analyst Ed Mills wrote in a Thursday note. “Given the current political dynamics, we believe the next fiscal relief package will pass under reconciliation rules, which likely puts the top-line number in the $1.5 trillion range.”

That higher number may be what’s called for, says Josh Bivens, director of research at nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute: “I see nothing that makes me think, ‘Yeah, we should go smaller, we’re almost there, we’ve got this covered.’ We don’t have this covered—we really need to go big to getting a full return to economic health,” he said on a press call Monday.

Even if Democrats are able to pass a larger bill with $1,400 checks, however, it doesn’t necessarily mean they will go to the same Americans who received payments the last two times. Though Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan doesn’t currently have set income levels for distributing the checks, there appears to be openness for making them more targeted. And some economists argue checks would be best sent where they can do the most good (i.e., lower-income families).

“You want to maximize your bang for your buck, so to speak,” Brett Ryan, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, recently told Fortune. “You don’t want that check just to be saved.”

If a deal is signed into law, the Treasury Department would likely follow the same timeline as the December 2020 package and get those checks deposited just a few days after the legislation passes.

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