President-elect Joe Biden told reporters over the weekend the price tag for his planned stimulus package will be in the trillions of dollars and that there is a "dire" need to act immediately.
The President-elect also said he wants a $2,000 stimulus check to go out “immediately.”
“As you know, analysis of what I’m talking about said it was necessary to keep the economy from going back, to create 18.6 million jobs, a trillion more in economic growth than this outgoing administration will. So it is necessary to spend the money now. The answer is yes, it will be in the trillions of dollars for the entire package. I will be here next Thursday laying out in detail how that package is going to go,” Biden said.
If approved, the distribution of $2,000 stimulus checks would be the third round of stimulus checks sent out since the pandemic began last year. Lawmakers approved $600 stimulus checks two weeks ago and the first round of $1,200 relief checks were sent to Americans received in early April.
The incoming president said he doesn’t believe the current payments of $600 are enough to help Americans afford their necessities, calling the second stimulus payments a “down payment. ”Stimulus of “$600 is simply not enough when you have to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table,” Biden wrote on Twitter. “We need $2,000 stimulus checks.”
Biden said he is pulling together a multitrillion-dollar economic relief package that would include the $2,000 stimulus payments and also include an extension of unemployment insurance and rent forbearance. “We should be investing in deficit spending in order to generate economic growth,” Biden said.
“The overwhelming consensus among leading economists left, right and center is that in order to keep the economy from collapsing this year and getting much, much worse, we should be investing significant amounts of money right now to grow the economy,” Biden said.
“Basically, the story is simple: If we don’t act now, things are going to get much worse and harder to get out of the hole later. We have to invest now."
Biden also promised last week that if Georgia turned the state blue—which Georgia voters did with the elections of Senators-elect Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock—"their election would put an end to the block in Washington on that $2,000 stimulus check.”
Democrats will control the Senate, but by very slim majority, with incoming Vice President Kamala Harris being a tie-breaking vote. Some Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin have questioned sending out blanket checks to employed middle-class citizens, but at least one Republican, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, has indicated he could support such a move.
Biden also said he plans to invest aggressively in health care and infrastructure “and a whole range of things that are going to generate good paying jobs that will allow us to grow the economy. Every economist thinks we should be investing in deficit spending to generate economic growth,” he added.
U.S. economic stimulus to deal with the Covid pandemic has been a hot-button political issue, with some pundits attributing the issue as one of the factors that led to the defeat of Republicans in the Georgia runoff elections.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took heat on Sunday in an interview from 60 Minutes host Leslie Stahl for the delay in getting a stimulus package passed. Stahl suggested Democrats needed to take equal blame for the stalled legislation.
Pelosi, however, blamed Republicans. It “was their obstruction,” Pelosi said.
“You held out for eight months,” Stahl said. "There's a member of your caucus who said specifically that, 'We look like obstructionists, and it was a mistake,'" Stahl said.