The rollout of stimulus checks has been famously plagued by delays and missteps, and people across the U.S. are anxiously awaiting news of a possible second payment. However, there have already been hangups with round two, particularly because the HEROES Act, which passed the House of Representatives in May, is currently stalled in the Senate.
Right now, Congress is aiming for a second, and final, stimulus payment to start its own rollout by July. According to Newsweek, the idea is to get it signed into law by President Donald Trump before the added unemployment payments are set to expire. The issue is that the Senate may need to modify its July 4 break to meet that timeline, and they’re already prioritizing police reform, which they’re also aiming to have signed prior to adjourning for two weeks for the holiday. Once legislators return, they’ll be facing a major defense policy bill reauthorization, which will take another two weeks until they break for their August recess.
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There’s the added problem that the HEROES Act is already unlikely to pass the Senate as-is. On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that “if there is something that’s going to happen, it will emerge in the Senate, it will be written beginning in my office and it will be done in July.” However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who introduced the $3 trillion bill, has stated her commitment to vital pieces of the legislation making it through.
“I haven’t seen any initiative on their part,” Pelosi said of Congressional Republicans. “The one-piece, state and local government [aid]…costs half of what the Republicans did in their tax scam, which gave 83 percent of the benefits to the top one percent, did not provide any stimulus to the economy and heaped $2 trillion of debt onto our children.”
Meanwhile, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro recently suggested that the second, and likely final, stimulus bill should only total around $2 trillion, $1 trillion less than the HEROES Act. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has also warned that there would be substantial risks to a real economic recovery without additional help from Congress. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he’s open to a second stimulus check, although he’s been insistent that there won’t be widespread shutdowns like was seen in May, which was done to help slow the spread of coronavirus.
