STIMULUS CHECKS AND BALANCES

The U.S. House and Senate have been in talks to pass another economic stimulus package to deal with COVID-19, and it includes another round of $1,200 payments to those that are eligible.

“Eligible” is a key term because the same process from the last round of stimulus checks will most likely be used again. College students, who are one of the populations most vulnerable to the current economic meltdown, may not get any checks this time, either.

The House is also looking to tone down the student loan forgiveness component that progressives were proposing: Instead of $30,000 forgiveness, it’s down to $10,000 in the most recent plan being considered.

Many college students are old enough to be facing the hardships of layoffs and furloughs from their jobs, but also young enough to be claimed as a tax dependent by their parents. And so, if you or your parents have not filed for taxes this year and you were claimed as a dependent the previous tax year, you won’t get a stimulus check until both you and your parents file, independently, for the current year (2019 tax return).

It is pretty frustrating that our government believes that means testing for these stimulus checks is better than the UBI (Universal Basic Income) ideas that Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang was running on, just months ago. His proposal, which I can see implemented in the very near future in some fashion, would be a no-strings-attached idea: Everyone gets $1,000 regardless of their age or income.

Yang’s suggestion predicted the need to stimulate the economy through people (yes, actual people), which makes sense – you give people money, they are going to spend it, in countless ways.

It’s especially important now, since the economy is walking the fine line between any decent kind of recovery, or major disaster.

Government bailouts to corporations, however, are not a preferable option. As we learned in the last Great Recession, when you give money to corporations – whether it’s through government stimulus aid, or taxpayer bailouts – it sets a precedent that makes the corporations a little greedier yet. When we make corporate bailouts a priority, and they’re the ones getting the most in the time of a pandemic, it makes our country a corporatocracy and we pretty much implement corporate socialism.

The new stimulus bill under consideration isn’t expected to pass the Senate, due to a change in the legislation that would give $1,200 to each dependent per household – as well as tying the payments to taxpayer identification numbers, and not Social Security numbers. These changes would have been a nice improvement from the previous stimulus package approved by Congress, but House and Senate Republicans say the bill is dead on arrival if they are made.

It is sad that many small businesses in Portland, and nationwide, are going to close up shop for good, because the amount of money that they need for survival is, instead, being redistributed to corporations that can afford the pandemic. Running a business is very expensive and comes with risks, but when the risks are higher for small business owners and not the giants making billions of dollars – it begs the question, who is the government is actually helping?

Implementing a well-done UBI system would certainly help the U.S. social safety net in the same way that Social Security helped Americans during The Great Depression, and those are the kind of precedents we need to set.