By Aman Jain. Originally published at ValueWalk.
The federal government has sent three rounds of stimulus checks since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, while states and counties are continuing to send stimulus payments to targeted groups even now. However, one group that hasn’t gotten the needed support but has been hit hard by soaring inflation is older Americans. Thus, requests are being made to send more stimulus checks to senior citizens. But, so far, there has been no official proposal to send financial aid to this group.
Q1 2022 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
TSCL Pushing For More Stimulus Checks To Senior Citizens
The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a nonpartisan seniors group, recently noted that inflation has slashed the buying power of Social Security recipients by about 40% since the year 2000.
TSCL Chairman Rick Delaney even sent a letter to Congress last year explaining the hardships that the elderly are facing. Delaney also requested that Congress send additional aid to seniors.
“We’ve heard from thousands of [seniors] who have exhausted their retirement savings, who have started eating just one meal a day, started cutting their pills in half because they can’t afford their prescription drugs,” Delaney’s letter said.
At the time, the organization noted that it is unlikely Congress would send more financial aid to senior citizens in 2021, but hoped that it would become a priority this year. To push Congress to send more financial aid, the organization even created a petition that calls on Congress to send $1,400 stimulus checks to senior citizens.
A report from the National Council on Aging claims that more than 15 million seniors are considered to be economically insecure.
Will Senior Citizens Get More Financial Aid?
Despite the efforts from the TSCL, there hasn’t been any serious proposal from lawmakers to send stimulus checks to senior citizens. In fact, there haven’t been any new federal stimulus checks since the approval of the third stimulus check in March of last year.
Congress is currently focusing on other issues, and thus, federal legislation to send stimulus checks to senior citizens seems highly unlikely for now.
Seniors, however, can benefit from other federal schemes. For instance, the cost-of-living adjustment for 2022 (COLA) of 5.9% was one of the highest ever. This adjustment increases the amount of monthly inflow for Social Security recipients.
Further, there are two more programs that make more food available to low-income seniors, and these are the Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program and Commodity Supplemental Food Program.
Under the first program, eligible seniors get coupons that allow them to buy groceries at farmers markets and other local businesses. Under the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, eligible seniors get monthly healthy food packages.
To qualify for these two programs, a person needs to be 60 or older, and their income must be at or below 185% of the federal poverty level.
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