St. Joseph County Community reacts to $2,000 stimulus checks being stuck in the Senate

ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Ind. - President Donald Trump and the US House of Representatives said they want to put more money into your bank accounts. After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put that effort on pause Tuesday, people in St. Joseph County said there's too much at risk for the people expecting that money to delay it much longer.

"Just come together as a country and make the decision," said Scott Witucki, who said he didn't expect his family to be beneficiaries of the stimulus checks but knows people who will be. "These people need it. I think it's just taking way too long."

Witucki said the fact that Congress has been working on this stimulus package since July and still has not agreed on what it should look like is "frustrating." He said the people he knows who need the money are "already in foreclosure and need the money to bounce back." Republican Congressman Fred Upton, who represents most of Southwest Michigan, said the clock is ticking for the Senate to decide.

"It's unclear what they're going to do between now and Sunday," Upton said. "Why is the deadline Sunday? Because that's when this Congress expires. A new Congress gets sworn in at noon on Sunday and any unfinished business totally lapses."

That means if the Sunday noon deadline comes and goes without the Senate approving this or the National Defense spending bill, both will be considered dead, and the whole process of putting them into law would start over.

Upton did say that regardless of what the Senate does, there will not be a government shutdown until at least the end of September. Government funding was included in the bill with the $600 checks that President Trump recently signed into law. The only thing that could change at this point is how much money people eligible for them will get in their stimulus checks.

"The difference is folks will either get the $600 that the President's already signed or they'll get $2,000, a $1,400 increase," Congressman Upton said.

Upton did say that because President Trump waited to sign that bill, the rollout of the $600 checks has been delayed. They were supposed to go out this week. Upton said he hoped to see them go out next week.