President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Democratic Party would have you believe the intention was always that a third stimulus check—which Americans have yet to receive—would amount to $1,400. The second stimulus check, totaling $600, was essentially a down payment. 600 plus 1,400 equals 2,000. You can do math, right?
The problem with this narrative is that Democrats like Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock ran on a promise that voters would get $2,000 checks—not $1,400 checks, but new $2,000 checks on top of the $600 they already received. They also said nothing about changing the eligibility rules for who would and who wouldn’t receive the checks in this new round of stimulus payments.
First of all, let’s get to those campaign promises. Ossoff and Warnock explicitly referenced $2,000 checks in their stump speeches. The idea even made it into official Warnock campaign literature. Biden, lending support for the Democratic Party candidates in their runoff races, said this:
By electing Jon and the reverend [Warnock] you can make an immediate difference to your own lives—the lives of the people all across this country—because their election will put an end to the block in Washington on that $2,000 stimulus check.
There was no consideration of a $1,400 check on top of the earlier $600 check, no delineation on this front. If the bipartite nature of this payment were implied, the message, ahem, has certainly been lost on the progressives using the #BidenLied hashtag which has been circulating since the Biden administration started pushing the line on $1,400.
One such critic, noted Bernie Sanders supporter Susan Sarandon, retweeted a compendium of Biden, Harris, Ossoff, and Warnock vowing that electing the Georgia Democrats to the U.S. Senate would yield voters $2,000 checks. Chuck Schumer is also included in the two-minute compilation expressly referencing $2,000 checks. In doing so, Sarandon highlighted how only 39% of Americans can afford a $1,000 emergency and that over 15 million Americans have lost their employer-sponsored healthcare since the start of the pandemic. As far as she and others of a like mindset are concerned, the difference between $1,400 and $2,000 is not just substantial—it may be a “matter of survival.”
Another element critically worth mentioning is the purported timeline for these payments. According to Biden, this money would go “out the door immediately—and that’s not hyperbole—that’s real.” At this writing, Congress has still not signed off on a third round of stimulus checks, $2,000 or otherwise. In fact, following a second impeachment trial for Donald Trump that ended in acquittal (and which now infamously didn’t involve witness testimony), the Senate is due for a week off. Gee, thanks, senators.
We would be naïve, especially in today’s jumbled political climate, to expect politicians to necessarily keep their campaign promises. By now, the trope is all too familiar. Politicians lie. They’re politicians. It’s what they do. We would be remiss, too, if we didn’t give a nod to Republicans for being the poor-hating obstructionists that they are as a function of their being. That we’ve only had two stimulus payments totaling $1,800 since the start of a deadly pandemic is owed in significant part to their willingness to throw essential workers to the wolves while disingenuously hemming and hawing about the national debt.
Depressing political realities aside, the pivot to $1,400 is a bait-and-switch move based on how the checks were initially billed—pure and simple. Democrats, once again, are capitulating to competing interests—real or imagined—without much pushback and in spite of their stated goals. Despite their attempt at revisionist history, progressives and non-progressives alike remember what was truly said, creating a very real concern for a possible backlash to be felt at the polls in 2022 and 2024.
What makes the Dems’ shift yet more galling is how even its more celebrated representatives from the “Sanders” wing of the party are toeing the line on $1,400 checks—even the man himself. Bernie went on CNN with Jake Tapper a week ago, trying to paint the situation as if $600 + $1,400 was always in the cards. Not only does this fly in the face of what Joe Biden et al. pledged on numerous occasions, however, as noted, but it ignores the fact that the earlier $600 check doesn’t even have the current officeholder’s signature on it. These new checks, very much still theoretical, would be coming from a new president more than a month after their predecessor. That’s quite literally not the same thing.
On top of this, Democrats have further bogged down stimulus/relief negotiations with talk of means-testing the now-$1,400 proposed payments. Previously, $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for couples was the threshold for direct payments, but to the warnings of progressives, some party members have mused about lowering the income eligibility limits to $50,000/$100,000 depending on marital status or basing eligibility based on 2019 income levels, which may underestimate the present need of millions of Americans. A far more efficient path forward would be to get the checks out the door, as Biden put it, and claw back that money this tax year for those who don’t qualify. The emphasis should be on expediency based on urgent need, not on political calculations that ultimately fail to consider the damage broken promises and personal financial ruin will do to voters’ perception of the party.
Americans have started receiving COVID vaccine doses, but in the interim and in the weeks, months, and possibly years to follow, the ripple effects of this pandemic will continue to be felt. No ifs, ands, or buts—everyday Americans need help and they need it now. Not long into a period when Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the White House, the party seems set upon undermining its goodwill by failing to stand by its promises and prioritizing economic prudency and political expediency (and not even succeeding) over coming to the aid of its constituents, including the ones who put party members in office in the first place. At a critical juncture in the country’s history, the Democratic Party can and must do better.
United States of Joe 