Trump Admin Says It May Be Months Before All Americans Receive Direct Payment Checks

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies before the Senate Finance Committee on Capitol Hill on February 14, 2018. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)
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President Donald Trump’s administration reportedly told House lawmakers that the direct payment checks from the sweeping $2 trillion COVID-19 relief package could take up to 20 weeks to reach all Americans who are eligible for the payments.

On Thursday, NBC News and CNN reported on a memo the administration had sent to the House Ways and Means Committee laying out the new estimate, which also projected that Americans won’t begin receiving the cash payments until around April 13.

The IRS reportedly aims to first cut the checks — about $1,200 for most people — via direct deposit in mid-April for taxpayers who provided the necessary information when they last filed to the agency this year or in 2018. That will allow roughly 60 million Americans to receive the payments.

Afterward, the government will have to send out paper checks to the rest of the approximately 150 million eligible Americans for whom the IRS does not have direct deposition information on file – a process that could take up to 20 weeks, the memo reportedly estimates. Additionally, those payments won’t begin until May 4.

On March 26, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had promised that the checks would go out “within three weeks.”

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.

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Notable Replies

  1. Imagine that, a Treasury Secretary that doesn’t know the process on how to pay out money?:roll_eyes:

  2. “. . . the sweeping $2 trillion COVID-19 relief package could take up to 20 weeks to reach all Americans who are eligible for the payments.”

    Then it shouldn’t be considered a “stimulus” package. Its effect is diluted over time.

  3. Of course it may be months. The idea is to slow walk it until fall so that when people finally get their checks they can be ever so grateful to the Dear Leader … while they’re living in modern-day Hoovervilles known as TrumpTowns.

    ETA Here’s a thought: Due to their interminable incompetence the problem is actually that they can’t figured out how to operate the autopen to put his seismographic signature on the checks.

  4. Avatar for pshah pshah says:

    Funny how the IRS can track down the poors when they’re owed money, but can’t quite seemed to find them now, and funny how this doesn’t happen to corporations.

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