Fourth Stimulus Check Update: Iowa, Massachusetts Residents To Receive Direct Payments This Month

West Liberty -- Americans living in Iowa and Massachusetts are set to receive stimulus payments this month as prices of gas and goods continue to rise.

The West Liberty City Council in Iowa on Tuesday voted unanimously to push forward with a plan to send 200 residents one-time stimulus checks worth $700. Only residents who were excluded from previous federal stimulus payments would be eligible to receive the checks.

The plan would use $147,000 taken from the federal American Rescue plan funding to send out the relief payments. However, city councilors Jose Zacarias and Omar Martinez are advocating for larger checks worth $1,400. A formal resolution is expected to come on June 21.

Should West Liberty send out the payments, it will become only one of two cities in Iowa, and one of the few across the U.S., to set up a stimulus payment program using funding from the American Rescue Plan.

Elsewhere in the country, some residents of Massachusetts are also set to receive stimulus checks by this month. The state will be sending one-time payments worth $500 to over 300,000 residents as part of the COVID-19 Essential Employee Premium Pay Program.

To qualify for the checks, an individual must be a Massachusetts resident who worked and filed a 2021 tax return. Additionally, a single taxpayer should earn less than $39,000. The income threshold goes up to $79,500 for a household of four. Anyone who received the first round of checks sent out in March is no longer eligible to receive payments from the second round.

“It’s a way to help these people with a relatively modest amount of $500, but it’s something to recognize their service,” AIC Economics Professor John Rogers said of the relief payments. “Obviously with inflation rate, it’s not going to last very long, but it might help with your gas bills and some of the incidentals that are racking up now.”

The stimulus payments come as the national average price of gas continues to hover near the $5 mark. As of Wednesday, the cost of regular unleaded gas was $4.955 per gallon while the cost of diesel fuel was $5.719, according to AAA.