Americans may be wading through a global pandemic and facing record-high unemployment, but they shouldn’t be holding their breath for a second coronavirus stimulus check anytime soon. Although the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, or HEROES Act, was passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month, it is unlikely that citizens will be receiving further relief in June, or possibly in any of the coming months, according to Business Insider.
Introduced by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who said that Congress had a “momentous opportunity” to meet people’s needs, the $3 trillion HEROES Act, among other things, would send a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks to individuals and up to $6,000 for households. It would also give $1 trillion in relief to state and local governments, provide approximately $200 billion for hazard pay for essential workers, and provide an extension of the $600 per week federal unemployment insurance benefit through January.
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As the final stimulus checks from the CARES Act, the $2 trillion relief package signed by President Donald Trump in late March, begin to be sent, many have seen the HEROES Act as a spark of hope. In May, the House of Representatives voted to pass the second stimulus bill, though it has since been essentially paused in the Senate, where it is unlikely to pass. The bill has been largely criticized by Republicans, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calling it a “$3 trillion left-wing wish list,” and Business Insider‘s Joseph Zeballos-Roig reported that “the bill is fiercely opposed by Republicans who say they are more focused on funding that will help get people back to work.”
“It’s not immediately clear that a deal will be struck among lawmakers to include stimulus checks in the next coronavirus relief package and it’s up in the air whether compromise is possible,” Zeballos-Roig said.
McConnell has stated that the Senate is still “not quite ready” to roll out a second coronavirus relief package, though he said there is a “high likelihood” of another relief package coming in the future. For a relief package to be passed, however, McConnell stated that Washington needs “to be able to measure the impact of what we’ve already done, what we did right, what we did wrong [and] correct that” and Congress has to “work smart.”
