Will We Get a Fourth Stimulus Check?
Living in a world in which politicians are allowed to exist means endlessly bearing witness to the same stupefying injustices playing out over and over again. Weee! Its always hellish, but theres been something particularly anesthetizing about the repetitions weve witnessed during the course of the COVID pandemic. To be honest, the whole thing can really make a girl feel like shes living in a sad, deeply boring, and nightmarish video game she didnt want to play in the first place. Ah yes, the one with the stimulus checks. Specifically, a fourth stimulus check, which is maybe, kind of, sort of on the table for the millions of Americans who are still unemployed and/or deep in debt after a devastating 15 months. The concept makes sense, as it always has, and yet, while 80 Democratic members of Congress have signed letters asking President Joe Biden to give the go-ahead and seven members of the House Ways and Means Committee wrote a letter to do the same, the relief money is still in limbo. But of course it is. The last year has taught us well that the very straightforward, necessary solution of giving people money to stay inside and safe, and continue to simply live as the world was turned upside-down, was a difficult one for Congress to makeeven after it was met with approval, thanks, and evidence that it was indeed an effective bandage. And so here we are again talking about the congressional negotiations, inaction, needless suffering, nickel and diming, hedging, political bickering and floundering, pure nonsense, and plain old general ineptitude of our representatives to aid a suffering electorate by simply giving us the goddamn money. At a conference last Thursday, press secretary Jen Psaki said that he is, happy to hear from a range of ideas on what would be most effective and whats most important to the economy moving forward. I would say thats an incredible nothing sentence except that its actually full of meaning, insomuch as Psaki went on to mention the presidents American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan, which, while providing other kinds of valuable long term aid, dont include immediate relief in the form of stimulus checks. Its been three months since the last stimulus checkthe third in a line of painstakingly considered, incredibly late aid packagesand despite the encouraging case numbers and an increasing sense of normalcy among the roughly 140 million Americans who are now fully vaccinated, it bears repeating that the pandemic isnt over. Things are reopening, the economy has started to bounce back, but its only just the beginning. People are still out of work. Those who have jobs are making far too little. People have months of rent to pay back and are still struggling to cover basic expenses. People have lost their emergency savings. It will take years to begin to recover. )who could in fact subsidize COVID aid without breaking a sweatare robbing us blind and perpetuating trauma for their employees during a global pandemic, among their other ongoing monstrosities. You can understand why 2.6 million people have signed six different petitions on Change.org for monthly stimulus checks. This isnt an ideological, theoretical struggle. Its not just that people like extra cash. The cold hard numbers on what aid money does for people are actually quite astounding. *** After $1,400 stimulus checks:     42% decline in food shortages   43% decline in gauge of financial instability   +20% decline in anxiety & depressionhttps://t.co/Q8iN0xQ2XZ  Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) June 2, 2021  Theres just no disputing the fact that handing people money was a stunning successall the proof we needed that a universal basic income should be a part of any ongoing welfare system. But despite that, the Biden administration and Congress are dawdling. Whats more, they are also standing by as the other great success of the pandemicexpanded unemployment benefitsis dismantled. To see Democrats look at the overwhelming evidence that just giving people money works and is popular, and to then see them shrug their shoulders and move on, is both infuriating and totally predictable. While we wait to find out if Congress is interested in keeping people fed, out of poverty, and mentally healthy, residents have been handling it themselves, as theyve done throughout the pandemic. Activists in Virginia, for example, are providing actual micro grants to people in need as they wait for the Virginia Employment Commission to fix over 92,000 unprocessed claims. Its just the latest example of communities coalescing in response to the coronavirus to do with the government cannot seem to do. Its almost as if theres a vested interest in keeping people poor and downtrodden, and maintain the status quo. As many people are still waiting on the money that they should have received back in March as part of the third round of stimulus checks, the talk of a fourth or fifth round feels more and more like a fantasy. It should be easy, but it isnt. Theres some momentum, but it will peter out. Its all totally possible, but also totally unlikely to happen soon if at all. Republicans wont back it. Biden isnt all that interested. Perhaps the worst thing about all this is that another stimulus installment, if it were to happen, would still feel like the bare minimum. As its looking now, we wont even get that. I dont know how many more editions of JUST GIVE US THE MONEY well have left, but my guess is at least a few. Well be here shouting it from the rooftops as we continue to wait to find out what meager help we might get to survive and stay safe. Well be here as long as the government keeps asking us to beg for scraps and be grateful when they occasionally deliver.