Stimulus bill poised to send $1,400 checks to millions who were left out of the first payments
President Biden’s $2 trillion stimulus bill, expected to become law this week, is being cheered by advocates who fought to expand eligiblity for the stimulus checks.
Carmen Rodriguez has been dreaming of moving for years.
Rodriguez, 60, who’s raising her two grandchildren, is trying to save up enough to get them somewhere safer, out of her North Philadelphia neighborhood and away from the open-air drug market in Kensington.
The pandemic pushed that dream further away, as her utility bills and food expenses went up when her grandchildren shifted to remote learning. She can’t work because she’s disabled; her primary income is from federal Supplemental Security benefits.
But the stimulus bill, expected to become law this week, offers a bit of hope for Rodriguez.
The bill expands stimulus check eligibility for adult dependents, such as disabled individuals, college students, and the elderly — an estimated five million Americans who were left out of the first two coronavirus payments. That means Rodriguez would receive $1,400 stimulus payments not only for herself and for her 9-year-old granddaughter, but for her 18-year-old grandson, Isaac Mejias, too.
» READ MORE: Who will get $1,400 checks, and when?
“The money will help a lot,” she said. “It’ll put everything back on track.”
President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package, which is awaiting approval from the House after passing Saturday in the Senate, is being cheered by advocates who fought to widen eligibility for the relief checks and to extend unemployment payments, as those who have been out of work for the entire pandemic were set to run out of benefits this week.
Biden said the checks — which total more than $400 billion, the biggest since the pandemic began — would begin arriving this month.
More than 25 million workers have been hurt by the pandemic, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, including 10 million who are currently unemployed, an estimated five million who have left the workforce and are not being counted in unemployment numbers, and 6.6 million who have seen their hours and pay cut because of COVID-19.
Darnell Morris was already on unemployment when the pandemic hit.
Morris, 43, of North Philadelphia, lost his job as a home-care aide for a cousin when he passed away in 2019. Morris was ready to start working again, but COVID made finding new clients near impossible. He’s still having trouble finding home-care work — clients, especially if they’re older, he said, are more fearful of letting people into their homes.
“It’s been a mess,” he said of his experience during the pandemic.
His existing benefits — from the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program, which extended aid for individuals who had exhausted state unemployment compensation — are set to expire Saturday. The stimulus bill would extend unemployment benefits like his until September as well as extend the additional $300-a-week in what’s known as Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation.
The stimulus bill would also make mixed-status families — those with one undocumented parent — eligible for stimulus checks, though the undocumented parent would not get a payment. Under the first COVID relief package, mixed-status families were not eligible for the checks, even if spouses and children are U.S. citizens. Attorneys from the Villanova University School of Law and from Georgetown Law School filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. government on behalf of these families last year. The lawsuit is pending.
And while lawmakers did make mixed-status families eligible in the second round of stimulus checks at the end of last year, these families could only claim the payments on their 2020 tax returns, meaning they had to wait months before getting relief, said Leslie Book, the Villanova law professor who brought the suit.
Despite the expanded eligibility in the stimulus bill, advocates are still worried that individuals who are eligible for the payments won’t get them because they’re tied to tax returns — and not everyone files taxes, or has to.
In September, the Internal Revenue Service said it would send letters to nearly nine million individuals — 276,000 in Pennsylvania — who might be eligible for a stimulus check but didn’t get one because they aren’t required to file taxes.
Jennifer Burdick, a lawyer at Philadelphia Community Legal Services, said that many people in the region didn’t get stimulus checks, or the entire amount they could have received, because the IRS didn’t have the right information on file. And while the IRS opened a “non-filer portal” to collect the information, Burdick said, the portal was not well-publicized and the window to sign up was so tight that many low-income people missed out on payments they were due.
She sued the federal government in August, arguing that families deserved more time to claim payments for their dependents. Rodriguez was one of the plaintiffs in the case — since she doesn’t file taxes, the IRS did not know about her grandchildren.
Later that month, the IRS reversed its decision on the filing deadline, which allowed low-income parents to claim the checks for their dependents. And through a settlement from the lawsuit, Rodriguez was able to get a $500 payment for her 9-year-old granddaughter, Nevaeh Mejias.