When Are The $1,400 Checks Coming? Biden’s Executive Orders Streamline New Stimulus Efforts

President Biden has signed executive orders that will speed up the distribution of the stimulus checks and expand food assistance programs amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Although Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion relief bill, there is no guarantee that Congress will pass it. In the meantime, Biden signed executive orders on Friday to help stabilize the economy, CBS News noted.

“We need more action, and we need to move fast,” Biden said. “We’re in a national emergency. We need to act like we’re in a national emergency. So we’ve got to move with everything we’ve got.”

In one of the executive orders signed on Friday, Biden called for a quick delivery of the $600 stimulus checks to Americans who have yet to receive the money.

However, Biden remains supportive of increasing the stimulus payment to $2,000 and plans to ask Congress to approve an additional $1,400 to be sent out to eligible Americans. There had been strong support for $2,000 stimulus checks in recent months from the Trump administration and from some Republicans, which suggests that Biden may not have to lobby hard for a new round.

Another signed executive order called for the Department of Agriculture to consider increasing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits by 15%.

This comes after Congress previously passed a $1 trillion relief bill that increased the maximum SNAP benefits by 15%. However, 40% of SNAP recipients were unable to benefit from the increase.

The order would also affect the Pandemic-EBT debit card program for students who have qualified for reduced-price free meals at school. Biden wants the USDA to “consider issuing new guidance increasing P-EBT benefits by approximately 15% to accurately reflect the costs of missing meals and make it easier for households to claim benefits.”

Around more than one in five Black and Latino families don’t have enough food at home to eat, and 14 million Americans have been unable to pay their rent, according to statistics compiled by CNN.

“This cannot be who we are as a country,” Biden said. “These are not the values of our nation. We cannot, will not let people go hungry. We cannot let people get evicted because of nothing they did themselves. We cannot watch people lose their jobs. We have to act.”