Second Stimulus Check: Taxpayers Weigh in on What's Included in Reported GOP Proposal

While Senate Republicans and the White House continue struggling to put together a proposal for [...]

By Daniel S. Levine

While Senate Republicans and the White House continue struggling to put together a proposal for the next coronavirus stimulus package, taxpayers are getting restless. The proposal was expected this week, after the Senate returned to Washington following a two-week July 4 recess. Splits within the party and between the Trump Administration and Senators came up during talks though, and the proposal is not expected until sometime next week.

The next stimulus package will be the first since the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act was signed in April as an amendment to the massive $2.1 trillion CARES Act signed into law in March. The CARES Act included a one-time stimulus check sent to qualifying Americans, with many receiving a $1,200 economic impact payment. A stimulus check is expected to be included in the new package and is starting to look similar to the CARES Act's program.

"Speaking of building on what worked in the CARES Act, we want another round of direct payments," McConnell said on Tuesday, reports CNN. The Kentucky Republican said the payments will "help American families keep driving our national comeback" and will help "create more American jobs is an urgent moral priority."

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Republicans have been trying to keep the package's cost down to $1 trillion, about a third of the HEROES Act House Democrats passed in May. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quickly rejected the HEROES Act as a "catalog of left-wing oddities" and a "wish list." McConnell's proposal is expected to include liability protection for businesses, schools, and other institutions so they do not face lawsuits linked to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Another major issue for the next stimulus package is the future of the enhanced federal unemployment benefit. The program included in the CARES Act entitled unemployed Americans to apply for a $600-per-week benefit from the federal government. It was allowed to expire at the end of this week, with no temporary extension. Some Republicans are looking to cut the program to as little as $200 per week, arguing that the program was a disincentive for low-wage workers whose jobs were not paying them as much as the federal and state unemployment programs.

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As this debate continues, the coronavirus pandemic is only getting worse in the U.S. The number of patients who tested positive in the U.S. crossed 4 million this week, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Just over 145,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began and 1.23 million Americans have recovered.

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However, new CDC data published earlier this week found that the real number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. could be six to 24 times bigger than official numbers show now. "The findings may reflect the number of persons who had mild or no illness or who did not seek medical care or undergo testing but who still may have contributed to ongoing virus transmission in the population," the study's authors wrote.

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