Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins joins 33 other mayors in calling on President Biden to support sending Americans recurring checks through the end of the pandemic.
Perkins said the US economy already didn’t work for half of all Americans and the pandemic has just exacerbated that, and this is a way to help folks out while stimulating the economy.
“I majored in economics in my undergrad, it will 100 percent strengthen our economy and giving a lot of Americans households this relief, this money, at this time, they are going to spend it,” said Perkins.
The group, which purchased a full-page ad in the Washington Post touting the idea, does not back a specific dollar amount for the checks. Perkins says there are several bills in Congress right now that have his interest.
When asked how these checks would be financed Perkins responded that the costs of not doing so are high.
“We need to make sure that people aren’t going hungry in America, they can put food on their table and they are not losing their homes and ending up on the streets because of evictions. That costs in and of itself,” said Perkins.
Part of the Biden Administration’s 1.9 trillion dollar COVID relief proposal includes one round of 1,400 dollar stimulus checks, but no calls for further checks after that.
Perkins left the door open to potentially leaving these recurring checks to continue even after the pandemic ends. He said adopting these checks now will give us valuable data.
“It provides us a great opportunity to study what impact it is having on our economy, what impact it is having on our families, and at the end of this pandemic we can really look at the numbers and the data to see whether we continue it or not,” said Perkins.
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