A lot of stimulus money is about to go away.
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Another stimulus package is not coming before the elections on Nov. 3, which is now six days away. While Democrat leaders continue to negotiate with the White House, it isn’t clear when a new COVID relief package will be complete. While President Donald Trump touted more financial relief would come after the election, time is running out on multiple programs intended to provide relief to the tens of millions of Americans financially affected by the pandemic.
The CARES Act, passed in March, provided assistance to many Americans who were out of a job or in need of more money when the pandemic was at its worst. Benefits included a $1,200 stimulus payment, a $600 weekly unemployment bonus and more. In August, President Trump signed four executive actions to extend some of these programs. But all of the most significant coronavirus relief programs are set to expire on Dec. 31, 2020, which is setting the stage for a morass of financial difficulties starting on Jan. 1, 2021, including an expected uptick in people filing for personal bankruptcy.
Here are the major programs that are set to end.
Unemployment benefits
Individual states handle unemployment insurance claims, determining if a person is eligible, how much they receive and for how long they can collect. Though it varies from state to state, the CARES Act extended the duration of benefits from 26 weeks to 39 weeks. Starting on Jan. 1, those additional 13 weeks provided by the federal government are gone.
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Next stimulus checks: What to expect
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Some states have already backfilled the void on their own, including increasing their benefit period up to 59 weeks, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Others, including Alabama, Arkansas and Utah, haven’t taken any recourse, which could leave unemployed workers in those states without assistance as the new year begins..
Read more: Coronavirus unemployment: Who is covered, how to apply and how much it pays
Another initiative of the CARES Act, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, also known as PUA, provided economic relief to those who wouldn’t typically qualify for unemployment: self-employed workers, contractors and gig workers. At the moment, the PUA is set to end on Dec. 31. If the federal government doesn’t extend it, it will be up to the states to determine whether they can step in on Jan. 1.
$300 weekly unemployment benefit bonus
The average weekly unemployment benefit doesn’t always equal a worker’s earnings, typically running between $300 and $600. To help fill the gap, the CARES Act added a weekly unemployment benefit bonus of $600. When that bonus expired on July 31, President Trump signed an executive memo paving the way for a $300 weekly bonus (for a six week period) with the expectation that Congress would soon pass another relief package. Of course, that hasn’t happened, and most states have exhausted the six weeks of extra funding. The $300 bonus provision is set to end on Dec. 27, according to the president’s memo, and is expected to sunset unused.
Can Congress piece these programs back together before more damage is done? It’s a waiting game.
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Eviction moratorium
The CARES Act provided limited protection on evictions by only focusing on homes backed with a federal mortgage loan or received some type of federal funding The protections were then expanded in September by the Center for Disease Control, which called for a halt on evictions. Although this order by the agency did cover more households including renters in 43 million households, it also came with an expiration date of Dec. 31.
Student loans deferment
Students who are paying off federal student loans also received a reprieve from the CARES Act, which gave them the option to defer their loan payments (and paused the accrual of interest) until the end of September 2020. In August, Trump extended the deferment until Dec. 31. On Jan. 1, loan servicers will once again be able to charge interest on these loans and students may have to resume paying them off unless the servicers offer deferment options.
For more information, here’s the latest status of stimulus negotiations, and here’s everything we know about the next relief bill.
