Biden Stimulus: $1,400 Checks And $20 Billion For Vaccines

President-elect Joe Biden will push for a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

That will come with $1,400 stimulus checks for Americans to add onto the $600 just passed, to come out to the $2,000 proposed in December by President Donald Trump and supported by numerous high-ranking Democrats.

There will also be $400-per-week unemployment benefits, expanded paid leave, and an increase in the child tax credit, WSJ reported.

About half the money in the plan will go toward aid for families, while most of the rest is slated to go toward vaccine distribution and aid as well as help for state and local governments.

Biden, set to take office Wednesday (Jan. 20), said he wants Congress to act quickly on more pandemic relief as COVID-19 continues to rage in the U.S. In the past few weeks, the virus’s daily death toll has been over 3,000 some days. There has also been more economic fallout as cities have to lock down and close schools.

Biden’s plan will also come with other ideas floated in the past by Democrats and which Republicans have been against, including a $15 per hour minimum wage. WSJ reported that it’s unclear what parts of the plan will become law. Even though Democrats have taken control of the Senate, they still only have 50 votes, while most legislation needs at least 60 votes to pass, so Democrats would be relying on at least some Republican votes, too.

PYMNTS reported late in 2020 on Biden’s potential plans to invoke the Defense Production Act for vaccine production, which would let the president instruct the private sector to put manufacturing the vaccines as a first priority in the interest of national defense.

And Biden isn’t alone in wanting bigger stimulus checks. Sen. Marco Rubio wrote to him this week expressing a need to put peoples’ needs ahead of “political games.”