COVID-19 was an unprecedented virus that broke into the new decade. No one thought that it would be life threatening at this level of scale in such as a short amount of time, but here we are with people buying unreasonable amounts of toilet paper like it’s the end of the world. And they could be right.

Right now almost every country is taking every precaution to “smooth the curve,” from giving free drive-thru tests (for the virus) to closing almost every nonessential business or store. Then there’s the whole social distancing and quarantining encouragement going on. Of course, the virus along with these precautions is strongly damaging the economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) has dropped down by over 8,000 points in about a month.

Many countries around the world are doing the best they can to minimize the damage that hits families and businesses. Countries like Canada and the United Kingdom are planning a stimulus package that would help give a temporary tax relief for businesses and emergency care for workers. Germany is also giving money to businesses with credit. These countries seem to be going very far with their plans.

A government that can’t seem to compromise.

It’s good to see that many nations are taking proper precautions in this global pandemic. However, America is still having trouble doing the same. For weeks the Senate has been trying to pass a stimulus package bill, but they could not come to a compromise as many senators didn’t agree with giving $500 billion to massive corporations.

It seems awful to think that the United States, one of the biggest countries and economies in the world, hasn’t even come close to deciding how to fix this crisis. It doesn’t seem like the government perceived the virus to be such a destructive threat until it was too late. But even then, this doesn’t excuse the fact that we’ve done practically nothing to relieve the economy in a quicker manner when compared to what other countries have accomplished.

So what’s happening in the US right now?

We’ve been trying to set on a deal on how much the stimulus would pay out for weeks, but despite the effort, plans continued to fall through. For the time being, all of the necessary details haven’t been revealed, but it looks like there is a new plan that will be rolling out soon enough.

The new proposed $2 trillion package will function similarly to how it was planned before. Adults would get $1,200, with couples getting $2,400. Children who are under the age of 17 would get $500. The payment would lessen for every $100 for people who make above $75,000 in income, and would be phased out completely for people that are earning $99,000 or more. Businesses and hospitals would also be aided from the package. They also plan to work with unemployment benefits.

The new plan also seems to be more supportive of suspending student loan debt until September 30th.

The payment should not be means-tested.

It’s unfortunate that the new plan still has certain restrictions regarding who will get paid. It completely disregards the fact that the virus may strongly impact certain people who make higher salaries. This plan also makes the entire payment process much longer than it needs to be.

Means-testing has been strongly proposed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wanting to only pay to lower income brackets. She has faced a lot of criticism by both parties for not wanting to make the package a universal payment.

There also seems to be a few more issues with the plan, as it seems to simply be one-time payment. It would’ve been better if they based it off a Universal Basic Income like Senator Tulsi Gabbard had proposed.

It has taken much longer than it should.

The fact that it is taking so long to approve the package is beyond disappointing. We needed this payment much earlier to ensure immediate relief to both the economy and the lives of countless people.