Published on
Wednesday, February 03, 2021
byCommon Dreams
'Will End Up Hurting Tens of Millions': Progressives Push Back as Dems Weigh
Lower Income Cutoff for Relief Checks
"Means testing is a form of austerity. Scaling back on stimulus would be a
mistake."
byJake Johnson, staff writer
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) listens as House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill in
Washington, D.C.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) listens as House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill in
Washington, D.C. (Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Despite warnings that doing so would be both politically and morally
senseless, top Democratic lawmakers are reportedly discussing a proposal to
further limit eligibility for direct relief payments by lowering the annual
income cutoff, a restriction that would potentially disqualify tens of
millions of people from the next round of survival checks.
Citing unnamed people familiar with internal planning, the Washington Post
reported Tuesday that "one proposal discussed by senior Democrats includes
lowering the threshold for the payments to begin phasing out above $50,000
for single taxpayers, $75,000 for people who file as the heads of
households, and $100,000 for married couples."
"We should not be alienating working-class and middle-class Americans by
excluding them from Covid relief. The argument is so obvious it's surprising
it has to be stated."
-Rep. Ro Khanna
With talks over eligibility for the $1,400 payments proposed by President
Joe Biden still ongoing, progressives are vocally making clear that they
oppose additional means testing for relief checks that already fall short of
the $2,000 Democrats promised on the campaign trail-messaging that helped
the party take narrow control of the Senate.
"Democrats in Congress should not waste a single day or shrink their relief
package by a single dollar in pursuit of votes from Republican politicians
who answer to billionaires and white supremacist insurrectionists," tweeted
the Working Families Party. "We need jobs and care now."
Ohio congressional candidate Nina Turner, formerly a top surrogate for Sen.
Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign, said late Tuesday that
"means testing is a form of austerity."
"Scaling back on stimulus would be a mistake," Turner argued.
The Biden White House said earlier this week that it is opposed to the
direct payment counter-offer put forth by Republican senators, who proposed
$1,000 checks for which only individuals earning less than $40,000 a year
and married couples earning less than $80,000 a year would be fully
eligible.
But the new administration has also said it is open to negotiating the
eligibility threshold for the $1,400 checks, which at least two of Biden's
top economic advisers have said should bemore targeted to those with lower
incomes-an argument also made by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's
top business lobby.
Previous rounds of relief checks began gradually phasing out for individuals
who earned more than $75,000 a year and joint filers who earned more than
$150,000; that same framework was proposed by the House-passed CASH Act,
which Republicans blocked at the end of last year.
In a letter (pdf) to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last week, more than two dozen members of
the Congressional Progressive Caucus cautioned "against an overemphasis on
targeting aid, when we know that it comes at the expense of delivering
relief quickly and efficiently."
"At this moment of fiscal crisis, Congress should err on the side of
offering generous relief to a larger pool of people, rather than too
little," the letter reads. "The cost of doing too little too slowly far
outweighs the concerns about a relatively small share of households getting
'too much.'"
Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, a left-wing think
tank, pointed out in an interview with the Post that "people have not filed
their taxes for 2020, meaning that targeted checks would go out based on
income information that is now one to two years out of date, with a pandemic
and mass job loss having occurred in the interim."
"This is not targeting," said Bruenig. "It is the illusion of targeting, an
illusion that will end up hurting tens of millions of people who are
currently in need but weren't in 2019."
"This is not targeting. It is the illusion of targeting, an illusion that
will end up hurting tens of millions of people who are currently in need but
weren't in 2019."
-Matt Bruenig, People's Policy Project
Progressive members of Congress have argued that limiting the number of
people eligible to receive relief payments would be a massive unforced error
by Democrats, a needless restriction of popular relief that would weaken a
legislative package which-according to some economists-is already inadequate
to the task of fighting the ongoing recession, public health emergency,
looming eviction crisis, and devastating surge in hunger nationwide.
Negotiations over who will qualify for direct relief payments continued as
Senate Democrats on Tuesday took the first step toward approving a
coronavirus relief package through budget reconciliation, an expedited
process that requires a mere simple-majority vote-meaning a unified
Democratic caucus would not need any support from Republican senators to
pass legislation.
Speaking to HuffPost earlier this week, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) called
into question both the political and economic arguments that have been
advanced in recent days in favor of curtailing eligibility for the checks.
"We are in a low-interest rate, low-inflation period where the velocity of
money has been reduced given the pandemic," said Khanna. "I have yet to hear
a single coherent argument on how our economy will suffer if we give people
$2,000 checks."
"We should not be alienating working-class and middle-class Americans by
excluding them from Covid relief," Khanna added. "The argument is so obvious
it's surprising it has to be stated."
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
