I think the reason people are fixated on the $2000 checks i…

Minimum wage increase is great! But I expect employers and states to fight it tooth and nail. Utility assistance sounds great! But we all know the horror stories about how impossible it is to qualify for relief programs.

Most of us have seen direct checks from the IRS come in immediately and be used for stuff the next day. That's fast relief, which is what we need.

If you're working 40 hours at, say, $11 right now, the $15 minimum wage increase won't even show up for a week and when it does that's $160 more per week ($15*40 - $11*40).

That's not nothing! But it's not a RIGHT NOW check for $2000.

Folks need $2000 right now, hell, they need $20,000 right now--10 months of back pay. Maybe that's impossible, but it's not helpful to act like the people who need it don't care about the rest of the bill.

Surely we all understand that a bill can be good AND not enough, and that advocating for more isn't necessarily done from bad faith.

Idk, I get that everyone is super frustrated, but I thought we were all on the same page that we were gonna have to hold the phones, hold their feet to the fire, and demand every mile we can imagine.

I feel like we're fighting each other online when we could all be calling our reps and demanding $2,000 checks instead of $1,400. Whether it was a promise or not, let's do it because it's the right thing to do.

Also:

- We desperately need a minimum wage increase.

- But a minimum wage increase is not a substitute for *covid relief* when so many of us lost our jobs or had our hours reduced because of the deadly pandemic.

Some of us want monthly checks so folks can afford to stay home and stop spreading a disease that will kill us all, and it's vexing to see people be like, "you're not praising the portion of the bill that still requires people to go to work in order to not die!!" 🤔

Well, YEAH, I'm not praising that portion of the bill because while it is desperately overdue and I'm glad to see it finally arrive, making it so everyone can survive the DEADLY PANDEMIC by not NEEDING to work outside the home is kinda my higher priority right now!! Wild!!

Idk, I feel like a lot of you are fighting that one douchebro left dude via subtweet and aren't realizing that you're punching sideways at a lot of other people who *aren't* That Guy.

And I'm really tired of people just *assuming* we don't know about / don't support the other stuff in the bill when the reality is that we're skeptical the other stuff will actually be implemented properly.

I know people who've been trying to get on unemployment for the ENTIRE PANDEMIC, so it's not that I don't care about unemployment expansion, it's that I know it's not reaching people who need it in the way $2000 checks for everyone would.

This is another good point I hadn't thought of: checks can't be easily "recalled" in the same way that the other benefits of the bill can be fucked with by states/courts after it passes. https://t.co/M3f5ANTKo1

My assumption is that Biden will cave on most of the Bill as soon as some R asks nicely in the name of "Unity". It's a lot harder to take back checks once they're mailed so I'm focused on "2000 not 1400" because that's something that they can do RIGHT NOW.
— Michael Orr (@Morr_1980) January 15, 2021

I think the reason people are fixated on the $2000 checks is because that's immediate in a way the other stuff in the bill isn't.

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