$600 stimulus payments begin arriving for Americans.

 

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnunchin. Yahoo/AFP.

$600 stimulus payments have begun arriving for American citizens. Yahoo News. People with direct deposit with the IRS should see their payment soon while paper checks will be mailed before January 15th. Efforts to increase the payment to $2000 have stalled out in the Senate. People are eligible for the full payments if they make less than $75000 a year for singles and $150,000 for married couples. 

My Comment:

As of a few minutes ago my payment is pending in my bank account. I'm not too happy about the entire situation. I don't need the money (but I am still taking it) and it's not enough to actually help people. In my case if I wasn't working $600 would not even be enough to pay my rent. 

The $2000 amount was better but it seems likely that will be dead. Both the Democrats and Republicans are playing politics with the checks and neither side wants to compromise. I don't really blame Mitch McConnel for trying to tie in GOP priorities into the bills as the Democrats did the same thing, but it's not the best strategy. 

Again though, both amounts seem rather pointless. Neither is enough for the people late on their rent or who have run out of unemployment. And it's not like people can really spend the money on much right now. If this was a normal time I might use it to take a vacation but that's not really possible either. 

The entire thing seems like a wasted effort. If congress really wanted to help things they would demand the lockdowns to be lifted. Though that would probably increase Coronavirus infections it would boost the  economy and get more people to work then any payment could. 

And I am still bitter about the fact that the omnibus spending bill that is paying for this included so much other nonsense. No, we shouldn't be giving money to Pakistan for gender studies, or any of the other millions of dollars that bill wasted on other countries. They can get millions of dollars but normal American citizens get $600? What a joke. 

As to what I will be doing with my $600? Probably nothing. Like I said there isn't much to spend my money on and to be honest I am thinking of buying a house. Saving the money won't help the economy at all but I don't really want to anything else with it. If the government has a problem with that then too bad!