On Monday afternoon, House Dems released a draft of their fiscal package. Amid the top highlights is that Biden is going for the full $1.9T and is not succumbing to pressure to reduce the size of the bill to accommodate the GOP nor centrist lawmakers who may be at-risk in 2022 elections. Further, the timing appears to be Feb 22 to get a bill completed and sent for a floor vote with the goal of putting the bill into law by early/mid-March.
Following criticism that Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package would benefit the rich, House Democrats agreed that individuals earning more than $100,000 and couples with income above $200,000 will not be eligible for direct payments. Draft legislation released Monday by the House Ways and Means Committee (full summary below) called for $1,400 payments for single people earning $75,000 or married couples earning $150,000. The checks will now completely phase out for individuals making $100,000 or joint taxpayers making $200,000.
The payments will scale down more quickly than previous rounds, where the top levels were determined by the size of the payment and the number of children in the household. The first round of checks, approved in the Cares Act last March, started at $1,200 before they began phasing out.
According to Bloomberg, House Democratic leaders rejected a push by some moderate Democrats to lower the threshold at which payments begin phasing out at $50,000 for an individual and $100,000 per couple. One such proponent was the man who may be the most important Senator for the next two years – Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat – who is critical to the Democrats’ 1-person majority in the Senate, and who has been pushing for lower income caps to qualify for the payments. Manchin told reporters on Monday that he wants to make sure that there is a “hard stop” so people making $250,000 or $300,000 don’t get payments and that the money is directed to people who are “truly in need.” – READ MORE
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