Is there no second stimulus check coming?

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• President Donald Trump was not able to sign an executive order last weekend that would provide another round of relief assistance for the Americans.
• The president has no authority to withdraw money from the treasury without Congress’ approval for appropriation.
• There are issues that hinder the distribution of the second round of stimulus checks ━ where to source the money from, and if there would be enough money.

Despite having mutual support from both Republican and Democrat lawmakers, President Donald Trump was not able to sign an Executive Order (EO) over the weekend to address the overwhelming coronavirus crisis ━ the supposedly second wave of stimulus checks provision.

In his own capacity, Trump could not just sign an EO that would materialize the HEROES Act (the Democratic stimulus proposal) and the HEALS Act (the GOP’s proposal) which both lay down plans on distributing the COVID-19 relief aid.

“Fundamentally, the president doesn’t have the authority to do that… It would be blatantly unconstitutional if he did,” Seth Hanlon, a tax policy expert at the Center for American Progress, told Yahoo Money. 

If Congress has not yet appropriated the budget, the president is not yet authorized to withdraw money from the Treasury. For example, the allocation that is being used for the unemployment insurance EO came from realigned funds that legislators have already allotted for disaster aid.

According to Hanlon, the unemployment insurance EO instructs the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to establish a new disaster relief fund system for qualified Americans using the $44 billion appropriated budget. Trump cannot utilize such budget and convert it to stimulus checks as they are practically tax rebates.

“The rules that Congress provided for the FEMA money do allow some flexibility on using it to provide aid to the unemployed… It’s clearly in the domain of Congress — not the president — to authorize the direct payment of money out of the Treasury,” he explained.

Aside from the difficulty of where to source the budget, the more pressing issue is if there would be enough money.

“There’s no pot of money that he could even take from that would be anywhere near sufficient to pay the stimulus checks,” Hanlon continued, “even if it were legal, which is almost certainly not.”

The first round of the stimulus checks provision was over $270 billion while the appropriated fund from FEMA was only $44 billion.

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC’s Squawk on the Street that the White House is open to resume discussions on another legislative package and budget allocations to sponsor relief assistance.

“The president is determined to spend what we need to spend… We’re prepared to put more money on the table,” he said.

Source: AOL.com