This new stimulus plan has a brilliant twist – $1,000 checks for taking the COVID vaccine

November 30, 2020 in News by RBN Staff

 

Source: BGR | By Andy Meek 

A health care worker wearing blue medical gloves is shown holding a coronavirus vaccine vial. Image source: Leigh Prather/Adobe 

  • A novel idea for a new stimulus check of at least $1,000 has been proposed and is starting to gather support from people of different political stripes.
  • The basic idea: Household would get a new stimulus check as long as they also get a COVID-19 vaccine shot.
  • This idea is starting to gather steam just as the US topped 200,000 new daily COVID-19 cases for the first time on Friday.

As 2020 draws to a close, the United States is facing devastating crises on two fronts — the most obvious, in the realm of public health, involving the coronavirus pandemic, with the US topping 200,000 new daily COVID-19 cases for the first time on Friday. That’s according to data from Johns Hopkins University about the pandemic, which has also pummeled the US economy as people have stayed home, causing customer demand to collapse at businesses large and small and resulted in layoffs and a rolling wave after wave of economic calamity.

Part of the reason for the economic pain is somewhat decoupled from the coronavirus pandemic itself, though, since lawmakers in Washington have been spinning their wheels for months and remained gridlocked over the contours of a new coronavirus relief bill that could provide most Americans with a new stimulus check. Which is why some people are now starting to talk up a new stimulus idea that could attack both of these problems at the same time — read on for perhaps the most creative stimulus check proposal we’ve heard so far, and one that, believe it or not, could actually save peoples’ lives.

 

Here’s the basic idea: The plan is a straightforward stimulus proposal, and would give people at least $1,000, as long as you meet a simple yet profoundly important requirement:

To get the money, you’d have to also get a COVID-19 vaccine.

This idea of tying the new stimulus money to a COVID shot has started to pick up support from people like 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, as well as N. Gregory Mankiw, who was a top economic advisor to President George W. Bush.

Another former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, John Delaney, explained why he supports this idea in an op-ed published last week by The Washington Post: “Money would go into Americans’ pockets just when the US economy can begin fully reopening with a vaccinated population that can go about their daily lives without fear of catching the disease or infecting others,” he wrote.

 

Likewise, Robert Litan, who worked in the Justice Department in President Bill Clinton’s administration, told Business Insider this stimulus idea is critical because it’s also a potential life-saver. It would put money into Americans’ pockets immediately, solving the problem of a do-nothing Congress, while also helping the US reach herd immunity and hasten the end of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Unlike previous payments, this is stimulus tied to socially responsible behavior,” Litan said. “So, society is getting a benefit from handing out the money.”

 

 

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