Tammy Duckworth wants new parents to claim their $500 coronavirus relief check

After Congress passed its first coronavirus relief package, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth began hearing from constituents: they had young children, so why couldn’t they claim the extra $500 in federal aid for those dependents?

As it turned out, their children were too young. Stimulus checks to individuals are based on 2019 tax returns, so the government didn’t have a system set up to get payments to parents of infants born in the first few months of 2020. “As far as the IRS is concerned, those newborns don’t exist yet,” Duckworth says.

Duckworth was well-positioned to respond to this