SSI Payments Going Out Next Week

This is my stimulus update for Friday, May 8.

IRS has released updated state-by-state stimulus payment data, indicating that approximately 130 million individuals so far have been stimulated to the tune of over $2oo billion, now whether they were properly stimulated is a different story, we don’t know how many of those actually got the proper stimulus payment they were entitled to or how many received less than they were entitled to, but this is what the IRS is telling us.

Nothing terribly interesting there, I’ll put the link in the description, one thing I noticed though is that they didn’t put a total at the bottom this time, you’ll remember the last time they did this, I pointed out a mistake in their totals at the bottom, no totals this time, just the very rounded numbers 130 million people, $200 billion in payments.

If you are struggling to make rent right now, I came across a spreadsheet being put together by Professor Emily Benfer of Columbia Law School where she lays out, by state, the policies right now governing evictions and eviction moratoria, moratoria being the plural of moratorium if you didn’t know, I think it’s super helpful, I’m not vouching for its accuracy 100%, but this professor is obviously a knowledgeable person who has spent a lot of time on this, and if you or someone you know is struggling with rent right now, I think it’s worth a look.

On to SSI, yesterday the Social Security Administration updated its website and gave us specific dates for those on SSI to receive their check, May 13 for direct deposit and direct express, May 15 for when paper checks will start going out, that is consistent with what I told you in my stimulus update for April 25 when I said that you should expect them to start going out the week of May 11, and of course May 13 is the Wednesday, which is the popular day for stimulus payments.

Now, switching gears just a bit, on the topic of representative payees, SSA has said that the IRS has not yet determined when payments will be made to someone who did not file a 2019 or 2018 tax return and who has a representative payee.

Now, I want to talk about Marco Rubio, so yesterday Rubio was on Telemundo basically saying that he plans to “intervene” on behalf of those U.S. citizens and their children who were denied stimulus payments because they were married to and filed taxes jointly with someone without a social security number i.e. an undocumented immigrant unless one of them is in the military.

We’ve talked about this before, a lot of people are understandably angered by this, because it’s one thing to deny the stimulus to an undocumented immigrant, that is a separate issue that reasonable people can disagree about, especially if the individual in question pays taxes, but this over here, far more people are outraged about what Rubio’s talking about, which is potentially denying the stimulus to U.S. citizens and their native-born children simply the citizen is married to someone without a Social Security number.

I would say if this is you, don’t hold your breath, they might override that in CARES 2 — I know that Pelosi and Schumer have called for the next round of stimulus to include American citizens who file jointly with their spouse without a social, I don’t know if that’s going to go through, but you do have until July 15, October 15 if you file an extension by July 15, to file a superseding return, no guarantee there, but potentially if you file that superseding return to file your taxes separately from your spouse without a social, that could trigger stimulus for you, but you have to weigh the benefits of stimulus against the tax negatives of filing separately from your spouse.

Undoubtedly you have heard about the Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders fairy tale of $2,000 monthly payments for every individual and up to three dependents, retroactive to March and going until three months after the Department of Health and Human Services declares the COVID-19 public health emergency to be over.

This plan would include all dependents, not just children under the age of 17, but if you do the math here, folks, think about it.

$2,000 for you, $2,000 for your spouse, $2,000 up to three dependents, that’s $10,000 a month, if you just annualize that, do a run rate, and I’m not saying the public health emergency, but it could, if it lasts until end of November, then under this plan you would still get payments for three months after that, December, January 2021, February 2021, right, and if they’re retroactive to March 2020, you’ve received a full year’s worth of payments, that’s a $120,000 income, it’s just madness, folks, I’m sorry, but it’s a fairy tale, Republican senators will not go for this.

Here are some remarks from Republican senators about another stimulus.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana – “Well, people in hell want ice water too.”

Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, “I wasn’t a real big supporter of the checks in the first round. This isn’t your classic recession.”

Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, “The real stimulus that’s going to change the trajectory that we’re on is going to be the economy, not government checks. So I doubt there will be another payment.”

Now, these are kind of the extremists, because we know that some more moderate Republicans would be open to more checks, Trump is not opposed to it, but not UBI, not universal basic income, not a welfare state paying up to $120,000 a year to its citizens, so I guarantee you will see this fairy tale all over YouTube today, “SENATE PROPOSES $120,000 A YEAR PLAN” or something like that.

What else, Trump administration may be looking to extend the deadline from the current extended deadline of July 15 to September 15 or even December 15.

I thought this was funny, but Congressman Raúl Grijalva has proposed the Murder Hornet Eradication Act, it proposes for “The Secretary of the Interior to establish a program to provide financial assistance to States for management, research, and publication activities necessary to eradicate the Asian giant hornet and restore bee populations damaged by the Asian giant hornet.”

State has to apply, show sufficient need, and the feds would cover up to 75% of the costs of a program to eradicate the murder hornets, well, that’s great, I mean honestly I don’t want to put a picture of these things on here to shock you or gross you out, but they are pretty scary and nasty-looking, so you can Google those on your own time.

That’ll about do it for now, I am of course keeping an eye on all the big players right now and will update you if anything big happens today.