I’ve seen a lot of discussion about what to do for the next round of stimulus checks. Biden and the Democrats have proposed giving every American $1,400. Meanwhile, some Republicans have floated the idea of instead paying $1,000 to single people making up to $40,000 a year and married couples making up to $80,000 a year.

I think that both ideas will have bad consequences for Democrats politically. The fact that many Democrats are proposing $1,400 checks in the first place is, in my opinion, a failure on behalf of the Party leadership. Much of the campaigning for the run-off elections in Georgia implied that if Democrats won the Senate, they would give every American a check for $2,000. Claiming that checks for $1,400 will go out to supplement the $600 checks Americans already received, totaling $2,000, seems to many progressives like Biden and the Democrats are trying to short-change the American people. This has led to the creation of the hashtag #BidenLied.

I think no matter how bad a decision it is to send out $1,400 stimulus checks instead of $2,000, it’s an even worse plan to send out just $1,000 to a fraction of Americans. Proponents of this idea says that it will stimulate the economy more because it will cost less and specifically target poorer Americans, whose stimulus checks will be circulated into the economy more than stimulus checks sent to wealthy Americans. But many Americans who make more than $40,000 a year are still suffering, and $2,000 can really help these Americans through economic difficulties that they are forced to deal with through government mismanagement in the first place.

I think giving anything less than $2,000 stimulus checks to the American people will massively backfire on the Democrats in 2022 and 2024. I firmly believe that economic concerns are the chief motivations for voters: many of the voters that delivered Georgia to the Democrats in the Presidential and Senate elections were working class people in urban areas, whereas much of Trump’s base was made up of working class people in rural areas. For this reason, stimulus checks are not a partisan issue; in fact, the vast majority of Americans on both sides are in favor of stimulus checks of at least $1,000. Add to that the fact that the Democrats promised “those $2,000 checks will go out the door,” and delivering less than $2,000 will be disastrous to the Democrats’ chances in future elections.

Republicans thrive off of convincing voters that Democrats don’t care about them, and by going back on their promises or trying to short-change the American people the Democrats will give the GOP ample ammunition for these kinds of attacks.