President Trump signed the $ 900 billion Covid-19 aid package on Sunday, after initially calling the bill into question by asking Congress to change it just before the Christmas holidays.
The legislation, negotiated on a two-pronged basis, provides for $ 600 in direct payments. After the deal passed in Congress, Trump demanded $ 2,000 checks instead.
CNN asked you, our viewers and readers, after Congress passed the bill to give your views on the latest aid package. Many expressed frustration with the $ 600 immediate payment, saying the bill was not providing enough help.
Briana, of Concord, North Carolina, lost her job as a business development coordinator for a massage franchise due to the March pandemic and has not received unemployment benefits since October. She and her husband are now dependent on an unstable income they earn from a small flooring business that they own, where her husband also works.
She told CNN that while the $ 600 stimulus check is favorable, it’s not enough for her family to get through the next few months, especially as she’s worried about paying her mortgage on time.
“$ 600 per adult plus $ 500 per child isn’t enough to get us through, say four months,” she said.
“So we’ve been very thrifty with our money,” Briana explained.
She said the first stimulus package from earlier this year was much more helpful.
Briana also noted that her situation is particularly difficult because she made the decision to homeschool her 7-year-old daughter due to the uncertainty of personal and virtual learning.
She told CNN that homeschooling takes six to seven hours of her day, and she also spends time helping her daughter with school work. While Briana was looking for work, it was difficult to find a job that suited her current schedule.
“People like me and my family fall between the cracks,” she said. “We need help.”
Nicole, a Los Angeles, California, self-employed hairdresser who is out of work for most of the year, called the $ 600 payment an “insult.” She counted on her husband’s income and unemployment benefits.
“We’re a two-income household and we need two-income households to make it work,” Nicole told CNN. Not being able to work is a “big hit,” she said.
She told CNN that the current package is not enough, and like Briana, she said the first stimulus package was more useful.
“We’ve been sitting here for six or seven months now, waiting and praying since the end of July when the first … unemployment, pandemic support ended and since that end a little bit better than nothing, yeah, but what are we supposed to do with it? When there are so many places to go, “Nicole said.
She also expressed her frustrations with how long it took for the current package to come through, calling it “unacceptable.”
The U.S. House of Representatives could pass a provision Monday night to increase the amount of money individuals and families receive in stimulus checks to $ 2,000.