WASHINGTON — Six hundred dollars. That’s the amount of up-front relief you can expect when this next round of stimulus passes through the machinations of government later Mondy morning.
Six hundred. Less if you made more than 75,000 last year. None, if you made more than 99,000.
This $600 was hard fought for by the way. As was the additional $300 a week in unemployment benefits set to now run through the middle of March. Both sums half of what was received in the last round of stimulus. Half the amount that left some families sitting on the precipice.
As these amounts have lowered, the cost of living hasn’t. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in D.C. is $1,900 hundred a month, slightly more than the national average. Depending on the age of the children, it can cost up to $200 a week to feed a family of four. And that’s considered a low-budget meal plan by the USDA. These just a few of the expenses that folks need to account for daily, weekly, and monthly.
The brokering of this deal has shed light on what looks to be important to certain factions within our government, and what is not.
Tax breaks, corporate protections, bailouts and playing to the base, all prioritized. The immediate welfare of the struggling; shrugged shoulders and the barest of minimums. As people are spending hours patiently waiting in food lines, billions are being set aside for walls along our border. While the average citizen is left looking up at an unstable future, politically connected members of the 1% are reaping all the benefits of their wants and needs being catered to.
I’m glad this stimulus has been agreed upon in the eleventh hour, something is better than nothing, but It’s far past time for us to examine what we value as a nation. People or monetary greed and the chasing of political power? A choice is going to have to be made because both can’t be served equally. Something must give, unfortunately, to this point, it’s been the people.