Even while $600 stimulus checks are being deposited in tens of millions of bank accounts, congressional Democrats are laying the groundwork for even greater stimulus payments, which some call “survival checks.” As Senate democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recently said, “One of the first things that I want to do when our new senators are seated is deliver the $2,000 checks to the American families.” With Democrats preparing to take power in Washington, a critical question will be whether such survival checks will be one-time payments or recur each month “for the duration of the pandemic,” as Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and others have suggested. But supporters of recurring payments ignore the fact that, once started, it might be politically impossible to turn off such massive new benefits, requiring huge federal tax hikes to cover their enormous ongoing cost.
Recurring monthly $2,000 checks would mirror the payments proposed in the “Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act” that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (D-CA) introduced in the Senate in May 2020. While not truly “universal” in that its payments would phase out for high-income households, Harris’s survival checks would significantly exceed other recently proposed universal basic income-like payments. For example, Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang touted monthly $1,000 per adult “freedom dividends,” while Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in March proposed $2,000 monthly payments “to every household in America” for “the duration of the crisis.” Harris upped the ante to $2,000 per month per adult, plus $2,000 per up to three children. That means a household of five (mom, dad and three children) would receive an astonishing $10,000 per month in federal payments.
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