Fourth Stimulus Package Update 2022 | Social Security Update | Gas Prices Decrease January 2022 – Stimulus Check Update
What’s going on, guys. And welcome back to your stimulus package update and daily news report for January . I want to talk about how the fourth stimulus package could potentially be coming. We’re gonna open address Social Security talks. We got some news there.
Some are actually saying we need to put some type of Social Security reform into the Build Back Better Act. So that could potentially be good news. We got some updates on gas prices. We’re actually according to forecast, we’re expected to see gas prices decrease and then bounce back up. So I’ll address that.
And when that potentially happened and I have some daily news as well. Hopefully, you guys have had a wonderful first day really of the new year of 2022. But let’s get into the update for today. And as always, if you enjoy these daily uploads, do me a favor. Go ahead and subscribe our site.
Let’s talk about how lower gas prices are really going to help out millions of people right now. What has been said is gas prices, the price at the pump and the prices that people are paying in the grocery stores are really impacting the lower and middle-income earners. Well, as millions of Americans continue to struggle. Even today, experts say that this is temporary relief due to gas prices coming down. But they’re also saying it’s not going to last long.
They’re saying gas prices or at least the forecasts are predicting we’re going to see a slight decrease in gas prices in January. They started to come down a little bit. We actually saw this starting in the end of November, gas prices started to trickle down December. They came down a little bit more. As of today, the average price of a gallon of gas is $3.28 per gallon.
But what you need to keep in mind is experts are predicting gas prices are going to continue to drop all of January. They will lead into February, and then they will bottom out sometime in February before ultimately picking back up. What they are saying is that we are expected to be just under $4 per gallon by May or June of this year. So what experts are saying is for those that are currently struggling right now is going to be the best time to really get yourself and your finances in order, because over the next few months, February is going to drop.
But then it’s going to trickle back up and come in just under $4 per gallon sometime in May and June, and then it will start to drop off again.
So experts say get your finances in order so that this doesn’t actually hurt you as much as many people or as much as it does for many people. But here’s something else you need to keep in mind. What we are hearing right now is the reason for gas prices dropping is because of it’s just not really in demand like it is in warmer months. Many people travel, many people go on vacation, they go camping, they do yard work right now. That’s one of the big issues.
It’s not really an issue today, but as gas prices drop, the good thing is people can afford more things, other stuff. But experts are saying that rising gas prices are also not a bad thing. They actually show we still have a strong economy. Speaking of strong economy, let’s address how strong our economy actually is and what’s going on with this 6.8% inflation rate. Many economists say that those who are lower-income will always struggle when the cost of living index jumps as high as it just did.
6.8% is the highest we’ve seen in decades. But here’s the biggest struggle. The biggest struggle right now is for those on Social Security. Now, I want to address this because what we are hearing is the cost of living adjustment is 5.9%. It’s astronomical in many cases.
But when Social Security recipients are still operating at a loss due to the high inflation, that’s not great. Many economists predict that we could easily see our inflation rate up over 7% in the next couple of months. Now, if this happens, seniors are going to struggle even more at this point, and that’s creating a really big cause for concern. This is also bringing up many provisions, the Social Security 2100, the sacred act. That’s the big one that’s being discussed at this time.
But again, like I’ve addressed before, the hard part is this would go against what President Biden promised of nobody making less than $400,000 per year would see a Penny more in taxes. But that can’t happen under this bill. So somebody is going to come out lying. And chances are it’s either going to be President Biden, and people that make less than $400,000 per year will pay more, or it will be a lot of lawmakers that said, we’re going to pass something to pretty much shore up the Social Security Administration.
But I want to bring this up for one main reason.
According to experts, Social Security was never supposed to be the sole income of a retiree. It was supposed to act more like a threelegg stool where you’d have your personal savings, you’d have pension and retirement accounts, and then you’d have Social Security. Social Security was supposed to act more like supplemental income or at least a supplemental income source. But that’s the problem. Many people don’t have much as far as a pension or even anything in their retirement accounts.
That’s a huge issue. Some people barely have anything in savings. And then when you add in Social Security, on top of that, it’s almost nothing. The problem is that roughly 20% of beneficiaries they rely on Social Security payments for more than 90% of their income. Well, here’s why this is such an issue.
If you include the fact that Social Security will need to stop paying 100% of benefits, probably by 2023 due to the fact that the estimates show that Social Security will only be able to pay about 76% of benefits come 2033. That’s why people like Senator Joe Manchin say, let’s not expand these programs. Let’s shore them up first. So here’s what I can tell you. And this is why these figures are so important.
Experts say that lawmakers only have a handful of years left to make a decision to truly improve the Social Security program. The biggest talks lately have been on the Build Back Better Act. Are we going to see it pass? Some say yes, some say no, but it’s not going to stop there. Here’s what we do know right now.
There are certain lawmakers that are pushing to see Social Security include or be included into the Build Back Better Act. Right now. Many are predicting that the Build Back Better Act is going to come in about $1.4 trillion. It could potentially include up to ten years of the child tax credit payments. It could include major climate provisions, expanded pre K and expanded childcare, whereas parents wouldn’t pay any more than 7% of their income towards childcare.
Here’s the issue here. Some of these things do not have 50 Senate Democrats that support it. Like, are we going to see ten years of the child tax credit payments? Probably not because experts and the CBO say it’s going to cost about $1.6 trillion just to fund this for ten years. Major climate provisions.
They’ll probably be about $550,000,000,000 for this expanded PreK and expanded childcare. Some say those are probably the most important. Those are the most important. But let me address why is it just to give more benefits to children? No.
Is it just to give more benefits to the parents? No. According to multiple reports, the reason why expanding into PreK and doing expanded childcare is so important is because this would actually get parents back into the workforce. And that’s the key get parents back into the workforce so we can fully reopen everybody’s making more money and the economy is doing very well. But we’ll see, who knows if all that gets included.
Now, let’s talk about schools reopening tomorrow. Tomorrow. About this time, children will be going back to school. What does this mean? Well, many schools around the country are already a little hesitant to even open up at this time.
They say Cobalt cases are just too high. Some say that everybody and I repeat, everybody needs to show proof of a negative COVID test. Okay, let’s dive into that. Here’s the problem. How would a school provide a rapid test to hundreds, if not thousands of children every single day? How would they do it? It’s impossible. We also know testing sites are already overwhelmed. So sending a letter out to parents saying you have to get tested by today if your child wants to attend school tomorrow, well, how do you do that?
Do you test every day? Because if so, the child and the parent is going to have to go to a testing center today and be in that. Sometimes you have to wait hours to get tested. You can’t go to school for a full day tomorrow. No, you got to go for, like a half-day, because then you got to get in line about lunchtime to get in that testing line to get tested for the end of the day.
And hopefully the testing center doesn’t run out of test and they can actually go through everybody.
It’s really a mess. It’s really a mess right now. But according to multiple media outlets, they say that they are expecting many schools to have closures tomorrow and possibly into this week. Now, here’s what you need to keep in mind as well. These schools could go back to remote learning.
But many school boards at this time are actually still making this decision. We’re a day away from students going back to school, and some school boards are still trying to make the decision as to should we go to remote learning? Should we just open up? Should we cancel school altogether? What should we do?
So again, a lot of questions right now, and we’re a day away from students going back to school. But right now, the US is averaging a little over 399,000 COVID cases over seven days. This is a new high back. Last year. In 2021, in January, we saw our highest COVID case counts ever.
At that time, we had an average for seven days. The peak was actually about 254,000 covered cases. We could easily top that in the next few days. Seriously, that’s not great news, but many wonder if there is a delay in death due to covet, because what we’re seeing is we’re actually seeing a huge increase in COVID cases right now. But at the same time, deaths have been pretty steady.
So some are wondering if this is something that we need to watch for, or is this just part of that delay? So that’s what we know at this time. Again, there’s a lot of questions going on regarding schools, social security, stimulus to build back, better act the economy and everything in between. But one thing I can promise you, we will have more answers very soon. Congress is coming back to Washington this week.
We’re going to have this in the next couple of weeks. We are actually going to have good news. We got a new jobs report coming out that will be coming out. I believe this Friday. And then we also have the CPI data, which will be huge as well.
And this is going to give us a good indication as to are we going to see inflation somewhat come down C difflation or is it going to jump up into the 7% range? So as I know more, I promise I’ll be back to share all the latest news and updates again. Just want to thank you guys for visiting our site. If you enjoyed today’s topic, do me a favor.
Thank you so much, I’ll see you guys on the next one.