An online petition pressing for $2,000 monthly stimulus payments is just about to hit its target to gather three million signatures for submission to the White House and for President Joe Biden to consider.
The petition, which has been circulating via Change.org, started last year by Denver restaurant owner Stephanie Bonin and her husband, calling for a $2,000 monthly aid for adults to survive amid the pandemic. The same petition is working its way to see a $1,000 monthly pay for kids.
“We need immediate checks and recurring payments so that we can keep our heads above water,” Bonin wrote, adding: “Congress needs to make sure that we won’t be left financially ruined for doing our part to keep the country healthy.”
Figures that were available Tuesday showed that the petition already garnered 27,81,131 signatures.
Sometime in March this year, Biden signed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that saw up to $1,400 in financial aid to Americans who suffered most from the economic slump in view of the pandemic scare. It also extended an unemployment insurance supplement.
The petition, however, doesn’t seem doable even if it hits the 3 million target, says Business Professor Brian Brenberg of the King’s College in Manhattan. He went as far as calling the petition seeking a fourth round of stimulus check as “detached from reality.”
“The folks who want continuous government checks wanted them before the pandemic started, they wanted them during the pandemic and they want them after the pandemic is over — it’s telling,” he said.
Relatedly, seven members of the House and Ways Committee are pushing for recurring stimulus checks to help keep millions out of poverty, citing results of a survey that showed how crucial the last rounds of stimulus checks were. They added the cash aid helped improve Americans’ ability to buy food, pay bills, and reduced anxiety and depression.
The Internal Revenue Service has begun farming out $300 a month per child in an expansion of the child tax credit authorized under Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan.
