What, exactly, is a $2000 check?
There is currently a debate on the twitters over the whole $2000 check thing.
On the one side, there is the argument that The American People have already received a $600 check and so an additional $1400 check will meet the promise given of a $2000 check given to the American people.
On the other side, there is the argument that, if the Democrats won in Georgia, the government would send a $2000 check to the people and the $600 doesn’t (and didn’t) enter into it.
And so there are people who are expressing disappointment that they are only getting a $1400 check after being promised a $2000 check and they are arguing against people who say that the promise was for $2000 and $600 plus $1400 is $2000.
Here are some of the things that people are pointing to:
$600 is simply not enough when you have to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table.
We need $2,000 stimulus checks.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 11, 2021
Food banks are strained trying to feed people worried about where they’ll get their next meal.
Essential workers continue to risk their own health and their families for us all.
Small business owners from restaurants to barber shops are hurting.
We need $2,000 stimulus checks.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) January 13, 2021
We can pass $2000 relief checks.
But we have to win this Senate election.
— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) January 2, 2021
Vote for $2,000 relief checks. https://t.co/nNbOv8iAKb pic.twitter.com/tEZeHU4Fkl
— Senator-Elect Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) January 3, 2021
And there’s this from WGN (on January 8th):
“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,” Schumer, who will become majority leader, said Wednesday.
Late Tuesday, Democrat Raphael Warnock was declared the winner of his race and an announcement for Jon Ossoff followed the next day.
“If you send Jon and the Reverend to Washington, those $2,000 checks will go out the door,” Biden promised Monday in Atlanta. “And if you send Sens. Perdue and [Kelly] Loeffler back to Washington, those checks will never get there. It’s just that simple. The power is literally in your hands.”
And so there is the question: Does a $1400 check meet the promise?
The debate seems to be something like “Hey, I was promised $2000 checks if you won the election in Georgia and you won the election in Georgia” versus “Hurray, now the American people will get the $2000 they were owed versus only getting the piddly $600.”
But this is becoming a debate over what the expectations ought to have been versus whether goalposts are shifting now that the bill has come due and the faith involved for the people arguing one side or the other.
On the one side is the argument that people should be happy with $1400 because it brings the number up to $2000:
Everyone’s arguing about $1400 vs $2000 but do you realize that it would’ve been $0 if we lost in Georgia.
— United for the People (@people4kam) January 15, 2021
Just click on that tweet and read the responses to see how the debate is going. Everything from “but they didn’t run on $1400” to “you hate working and poor people” is showing up.
The debate strikes me as a preview of the coming 2/4/6/8/10/12 years. What is reasonable to have expected? What is reasonable to explain to people who expected incorrectly?
(Featured image is “2 + 2 = 4” by ChaosHusky is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
I was surprised to see $1200 hit my account on January 1. I didn’t think I met the criteria for a second check but I guess my adjusted income puts me below the line? I assume I got $1200 because I claim one of my sons as a dependent (the other fucker can remain outside… he knows what he did).
I don’t really need the stimulus. I’ll likely have an eventual loss of income due to time off I’m taking to support the boys’ schooling, but I have sufficient savings to more than make up for it. My plan is to spend the money locally as much/best I can and/or donate to charity.Report
I can see this be a misunderstanding, and yet, it was a completely predictable one.
I think Biden and Dems should go for a full $2000. If they have to dial it down some to get some Republican support, so be it. If not, we can afford it. Or we will once we roll back the idiot tax breaks.
Interest rates are really, really low. That makes it a great time to borrow money.Report
Heck, there’s a K-shaped recovery going on right now and the people at the top of the K can/should be asked to help out those at the bottom of the K. We’re all in this together, we all have a responsibility to each other, and so on.
If we want to hammer out particulars of the whole issue of where we need to draw the line for people sending 100% of this stimulus back to the government and where people get to keep 100% of the stimulus and where the taxes ought to be for “okay, you can keep 50% of the stimulus, free and clear”, that’d be fine with me. Those are fun arguments to have. (Personally, I think we need to draw the line at around $2000/year more than my household income. It’s only fair.)
That’s not the thing I find interesting, though.
What I find interesting is the pathologizing of the people who disagree between the $1400 and the $2000.
You’re complaining about getting another $1400? HOW DARE YOU.
You’re complaining about me noticing that you’re literally gaslighting me? HOW DARE YOU.Report
First, you need to sort the particulars.
There’s a $300 weekly federally funded bump up in Unemployment Insurance, to be administered by the states.
There’s a $600 one time stimulus check.
And Biden has proposed adding $1400 to this to get to $2000.
While the debates you outline might serve certain pedantic interests, there’s no lack of clarity here on what is under discussion.Report
“there’s no lack of clarity here”
Au contraire, there certainly seems to be ambiguity. The official payment date, if Google is to be trusted, was Jan. 4.
Ossoff and Warnock can probably get by on saying “hey, we just need to get you guys an additional $1400 now!” but saying that there’s no lack of clarity when it comes to what Biden and Harris said does not seem to take into account the potential for ambiguity, given Biden talking about getting to Washington and $2000 checks going out the door… after the $600 checks went out the door.Report
…there certainly seems to be ambiguity.
No, there’s not. There’s Tlaib and AOC with an internet megaphone, but zero evidence that they have 218 votes in the House for $2600 rather than $2000. Zero evidence that they have 60 votes in the Senate for $2600. Zero evidence that they have 50 votes in the Senate to kill the filibuster for $2600 rather than $2000.
For the next two years, the only place there’s ambiguity is whether McConnell and the Senate Republicans will draw a line that the Senate Democrats will kill the filibuster to cross. That every Senate Democrat, including Manchin and nine Mountain West Senators, will kill the filibuster to cross.Report
Oh, if we’re talking about whether there is a snowball’s chance in hell of the $2000 checks going out, I agree that there is not.
Those checks-totaling-$2000 will be going out the door, most probably. (And, honestly, making the debate be between $2600-total and $2000-total is superb framing. It’s a hell of a more helpful-for-the-bottom-part-of-the-K than a $1400 vs. $Diddly would be.)
The ambiguity, what of it there is, was when the time was assumed to have started when the promises about $2000 checks were made and by whom… and the degree to which the people who reach this conclusion instead of that one ought to be punished and socially sanctioned.Report
There is currently a debate on the twitters over the whole $2000 check thing.
Never a good start. Badly begun, poorly done.Report
It’s twitter. Who the fish cares what the twitts gibber? The specifics of 1400+600 vs 2000 won’t even make the needle quiver in terms of the actual electorate in a month, let alone two years when the actual elections are held.
Now that will be interesting is how this whole thing goes in the Senate. This isn’t being proposed via reconciliation so this is a big whopping test balloon to see how Mitch is going to play this cycle. If a popular bill like further Covid relief goes down in filibuster flames with Mitch whipping up lockstep GOP opposition the way he did during Obama’s terms then we will know Mitch is still sticking to his old playbook and Biden will be stuck with reconciliation and executive actions only. Can the Dems make the GOP pay for it if that’s the play they go with? Will they try? Be interesting to see.
And if Mitch doesn’t repeat history and there’s arguments, posturing, horse trading, negotiating and the end result is the bill eventually passes with a handful of moderate GOP votes? That’s earthshaking news all by itself; a return to more normal Senate behavior.Report
Who the fish cares what the twitts gibber?
I remember when we said this about tumblr.
This sort of thing is what defines the various sides of the overton window. As someone who thinks that the country is in a case of epistemic divorce, seeing further splinterings strikes me as an indicator for the future.Report
If you were talking about anywhere but twitter I’d at least consider it but the reality is that twitter is where the politically engaged, the journalists and assorted other engaged people go to scream at each other. They’re not just demonstrably disconnected from the actual electorate at large but also are ludicrously distant from the actual moods and sentiments of the masses. I’m not sure if you can even see the mood of the vox populi with a radio telescope from inside twitter. If someone asked me “What is the opinion of most of the people in the country” I couldn’t tell you specifically but if I said “Whatever it is, whatever twitter says it is is wrong.” I’m deeply confident I’d be correct.
Not only will the vox populi not care in two years whether Biden got them $1400 checks or 2000 checks this year but Twitter itself will not care about that question in 2 months after the deed is done; and frankly I think I’m being insanely generous to the Twitterati by allowing that they might hold onto the subject for 2 months.Report
Not only will the vox populi not care in two years whether Biden got them $1400 checks or 2000 checks this year but Twitter itself will not care about that question in 2 months after the deed is done; and frankly I think I’m being insanely generous to the Twitterati by allowing that they might hold onto the subject for 2 months.
What I find interesting is not the $1400/$2000 debate.
Should it be $1400? Well, yeah, I can see how the promise was for $2000.
Should it be $2000? Well, yeah, I can see how the promise for $2000 was made after the $600 went out.
My dog is not in that particular fight.
What I find interesting is the pathologizing of the people who disagree between the $1400 and the $2000 by the different sides. This isn’t a fight between the Gravel boys and Team MAGA.
But you wouldn’t know it.Report
Yes, pathologizing of the people who disagree -on twitter- between the $1400 and the $2000 camps. I’ve heard of people who are ready to gouge each others eyes out -on twitter- over various shipping combinations of characters in semi-popular anime series. I’ve heard of people -on twitter- who pathologize each other into camps between if a cute youtube cat video constitutes animal cruelty or not.
I’m probably sounding more scathing than I should. Is it an interesting debate? I’d say marginally yes. Do I think it’s a substantive debate? So far I’d say no.Report
The 17 year olds who were threatening violence over Steven Universe are now 25 year olds who are out of college.
And now they’re having discussions over financial stimulus policy with the exact same patterns as discussions over Rose Quartz being depicted as skinnier in fan art than on the show.Report
Yup, and defenestrating their journalistic principles while their industry dissolves around them like a skeleton in acid; frantically signaling about invented social nonsense to try and one up each other for increasingly scarce professorial slots in universities as their institutions are slowly sinking into the sea and on and on, on twitter. Bless their hearts.Report
To be fair, some of those twits are members of Congress.Report
On a related note, I just came across this this howler from one of the usual suspects:
https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1334928129673097217
I wonder if she’s actually as dumb as she acts, or if it’s just pandering to her fans, who are definitely as dumb as she acts.Report
It could be either; she gets rewarded handsomely by the lefty fringe and every right wing person and media institution in the country for her schtick. That being said I honestly do suspect AoC has aspirations of seriousness. She could have gone deeper into her schtick, a la Cruz or Hawley for instance, and have been rewarded even more by the lefty fringe and every right wing person and media institution in the country but she didn’t and it appears to me that it’s because she has designs on the party.Report
“Who the fish cares what the twitts gibber?”
ok boomerReport
Or Xer in my case.Report
boomer is as boomer does, sir.Report
Congress can always increase to more money and I do not think Biden will say no. That being said, Biden’s great political insight was Twitter is not real life. Rose twitter is even less real life than that.
Biden might end up being one of the most progressive Presidents in American history. He has already denounced defecit thinking. Schumer has called for marijuana legalization and an FDR style 100 days. I do not give a damn fuck what Walker Bragman and the trustfund cosplay socialists say on twitter.Report
You mean one of the most left-wing presidents. There’s nothing progressive about leftism.Report
“I do not (care) what Walker Bragman and the trustfund cosplay socialists say on twitter.”
Oh, indeed. Neither do I.
I am interested in *HOW* they say it.Report
Comment in modReport
Don’t you have the permissions needed to pull your own comments out of moderation?Report
Don’t use f-u-c-k (less the dashes) or any word that includes it. Just don’t. It’s going to get your comment tossed into moderation every time, and someone with editor privileges is going to have to go scan it, see that that word is the reason, and manually approve the comment.
I believe that the traditional substitute here is “fish”.Report
Really? I just thought we had a lot of outdoorsmen. I’ll have to go reread some threads.Report
I’ve learned that the hard way lol
Re: the substitute word “fish”, until today I thought that was a (pretty lame) attempt to present as civil by the curse-word squeamish.
Now I know better.Report
I thought it started out that way. Have posts containing that word been going into moderation for the past ~10 years, or however long “fish” has been in fashion here?Report
Both Tlaib and AOC are *on board* with the $600 +$1400 doesn’t = $2000 argument. They’ve twitterized as much. Seems like a bizarre hill to stake a flag on when the math is clearly against them and Biden has *quite clearly* advocated exactly what they wanted prior to changing their minds.
My own recollection of things is that neither of those CCers had publicly argued prior to Biden’s move (ie., to include an additional $1400 in direct payments) that $2000 isn’t enough. It’s bizarre, distracting, and makes the left look as ridiculous as their worst detractors say they are.Report
There were two, and only two, proposals on the table when it counted: $2,000 and $600. The Senate insisted on $600 and the House swallowed it. Various people, including the Democratic candidates in Georgia, campaigned on getting the full $2,000. Nobody was proposing $2,600. Maybe somebody will, and that will be fine. Particularly with the people who were advocating $2,000. This is a fake controversy, like so much on Twitter.Report
lol Nobody was promising $2600, but Tlaib and AOC are arguing for it. It’s so crazy I understand your reluctance to believe it.Report
Past tense something you have trouble with?Report
It’ll be an interesting contrast to the first year or so of Trump’s administration, where we heard that he promised X, but we only got half-X, and therefore he lied, he lied, he’s a lying liar who can’t and won’t deliver on his promises! And when someone said “you know, the alternative here was nothing,” it was confidently explained that he had said X and that it was important to hold politicians accountable for their public statements.
(The next couple years, yeah, we ended up getting nothing after all.)Report
Well, looks like this particular debate could well be moot.
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