No, Congress Hasn’t Approved New $1,000 Stimulus Checks

No, Congress Hasn’t Approved New $1,000 Stimulus Checks

If you’d rather watch than read, check out the YouTube version here!

I’m going to answer questions later on in this video, but first I got to tell you something.

You may have seen videos on YouTube with titles about newly-approved $1,000 stimulus checks, well, in my opinion, that’s complete B.S., it’s misleading and deceptive, and anyone misleading anyone during this time right now can go screw off.

Now, there are some other folks creating legit content right now about the stimulus, Clear Value Tax, for example, another CPA, is one of them, he’s very legit, very to the point, there’s some other good ones too, but he’s one I can think of right now.

But what’s really pissing me off are these other YouTubers, non-financial professionals, just people chasing clicks and views, who seem to me — and after I tell you what I’m talking about and give you examples, you can research them yourself and let me know if you agree with me or not — these other creators who are creating these incredibly misleading clickbait to prey on the collective desperation of the American people right now to rack up the views.

If you’re a YouTube creator doing this right now, please stop. This is a time to help people and provide accurate information with accurate headlines and not sensationalize things.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: It’s OK to make money during a crisis, but it’s not OK to make money from a crisis.

And you’re making money from a crisis if you pump out clickbait knowing that desperate people looking for any good news right now, particularly good financial news, will click on it.

And I’m going to give you examples of what I’m talking about in particular in just a minute, but to give some context here’s the first update for the day: yesterday the House signed the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, and early today Trump signed it, this is the $480 billion relief package

I told you this would happen in updates earlier this week, I told you the House would pass it on Thursday and Trump would sign it on Friday, today, we knew this would happen.

I’ve gone over what this act is about, but just to review, basically it’s additional funding for the SBA loan programs, Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, and there’s also funding in there for hospitals and COVID testing.

And just like I told Kee when he asked his question yesterday, it is infusing $10 billion into the EIDL grants, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan grants — and by the way, this money is going to go just as fast as the original money, for all these programs, just so you know — anyway the EIDL is the $1,000 per employee grant for small business owners, independent contractors, sole proprietors, this has been around since the CARES Act was signed into law by President Trump on March 27, almost a month ago, and when that application came out for these grants, I did a walkthrough right here on the channel in March, almost a month ago, showing you exactly what you need to do to get them.

Old, old, old, this is new money for old programs that if you’re a business owner or independent contractor i.e. someone who’s eligible for this money you’ve probably already known about for weeks now.

$1,000 per employee grant up to $10,000.

And what’s pissing me off, and I hope none of you are falling for this, but what’s pissing me right off is you got these YouTubers presenting this, at least in their titles, like it’s a new round of $1,000 “stimulus checks,” and in my opinion they are confusing and misleading people at a time when correct information is of paramount importance.

Look at this channel, Meet Kevin, he basically got over 1,000,000 people to click on this video with the title “Extra $1,000 Stimulus Checks Just Approved.”

And I’m basically helping him here, because I know a lot of you are going to click on his stuff now, so you’re welcome, Meet Kevin.

But I mean, if you saw that in your feed on YouTube, who wouldn’t click on that, I mean especially because right now it’s all a lot of people talking about, stimulus, the $1,200, and wow, “Extra $1,000 Stimulus Checks Just Approved”, OK let me check that out.

It’s not a new round of stimulus checks.  It’s additional funding for a grant for small business owners and independent contractors through the Small Business Administration that already has a giant backlog.

And take a look at this, every time something happened with this, a new video, look, in the past two days, one, two, three, four videos, probably by now totaling over 2,000,000 views, on these supposed extra $1,000 stimulus checks.

Look at this one, oh, the House passed it, over half a million views, we all knew at the beginning of the week that the House would pass it yesterday.

But you know, if he wants to do an update every time Congress farts, fine, more power to him, that’s his right and that’s not really what I have a problem about.

My problem is with these misleading titles, especially this one — “Extra $1,000 Stimulus Checks JUST Approved” — this is in my opinion, completely misleading.

See, when I look at “Extra $1,000 Stimulus Checks Just Approved,” that implies to me, maybe not to you out there watching this, but to me, this means to me that Congress or somebody has just approved another round of stimulus checks for $1,000 to the American people.

What else could that be construed as? I mean, am I off here? Isn’t that what it sounds like to you, right?

But that’s not what happened at all. What happened is these EIDL grants, that we’ve all known about for over a month now, for small business owners, independent contractors, and sole proprietors are getting more funding, just like I’ve explained in previous videos, just like I told Kee yesterday, that’s it, obviously there are other components to the bill that I’ve spoken about previously, but when these YouTubers are referring to this $1,000 quote-unquote “stimulus”, all they’re referring to is this EIDL grant.

By the way, Kee, and others, I checked today, still no application on the SBA website, still has that Lapse in Appropriations language, but keep checking.

So am I off here? What do you all think? Am I being too harsh on this guy? Do you think this title — extra $1,000 stimulus checks — do you think it’s misleading? Let me know if you think I’m right on or if I’m off, right down below in the comment section.

I mean, maybe, look, maybe it’s because I’m not a marketer, I’m a CPA, and my concern is accuracy not clicks.

Don’t want to be misleading in any way.

Speaking of misleading, so you remember previously we talked about the car dealership in Illinois that sent out mailers that implied that inside was something related to stimulus information, well another dealership did this in Florida, Traffic Jam Events LLC and its owner David J. Jeansonne the second sent mailers to over 35,000 individuals for a big ol’ car tent sale at his dealership in Bushnell, Florida.

And now the Florida attorney general is going after him. Good.

OK, in other stimulus news, today California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order preventing private debt collectors from garnishing stimulus payments, and this is retroactive, other states have previously done the same thing, and I expect more of this in the near future.

And he says if you owe child support this doesn’t apply obviously, if you owe victims from some crime you committed, it doesn’t apply, also if you owe alimony this doesn’t apply.

Let’s move on to questions. By the way, the IRS is doing maintenance in the middle of the night, last night, tonight, and tomorrow night on the Get My Payment Tool and hopefully they will fix it and get rid of that Payment Status Not Available message, so I’m not answering any questions about the Get My Payment Tool, just know the IRS is looking into it, they’re supposedly doing critical updates, so be sure to check it out after they’re done.

So all you non-filers out there, hopefully after the IRS does this system maintenance, critical update, whatever, in the middle of the night tonight and tomorrow night, you will have answers.

Now most of the questions I saw in the comments were about the Get My Payment Tool, I’ve covered all that I know previously about that, for your specific payment, the Get My Payment Tool, after it’s updated, will hopefully shed some more light, so only a few questions today because so many of the ones that I saw pertained specifically to the Get My Payment tool.

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OK, that’s it, hope you all have a great weekend and that when you check the Get My Payment Tool this weekend after tonight’s maintenance and tomorrow night’s maintenance that it will work for you so that you all get your stimulus so that I can start creating more content about credit and investing and real estate and all that stuff that I love to talk about other than stimulus. Stay safe, you all.