Biden Says $1,400 Checks a Promise He Won't Break -- but He's Willing to Limit Who Gets Them

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13. What were Biden's original limits and what is being counter-offered?

There seems to be a similar parallel negotiating with the child tax credit; a number of Democrats have proposed a lower income phase-out than what Biden has proposed.

These counter proposals seem fine (they’re six digits for couples) and I suspect Biden may have thrown out deliberately high numbers to give Manchin and Sinema some cover and maybe even get a Collins or Murkowski reluctantly on-board with some scaled back numbers, not in the check amounts but in stricter income tests. Ideally it won’t go to people who don’t need it but will be enough to keep the newly Democratic suburbs happy.

Whether it was smart or not to send Harris to West Virginia (it clearly got under Manchin’s skin) is debatable, but to get WV’s Republican governor to go on record as endorsing a high price tag stimulus was genius.