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New sticking points like stimulus checks could dash hopes for a deal to get through this week.

“What it means is we’re not looking at a package until the 18^th at the earliest,” Hoagland said.

Much of whether or not more direct payments are included will ultimately come down to whether McConnell is willing to include them in the next package, Hoagland said. This week, the Senate majority leader reportedly told the White House he supports $600 checks.

How soon Americans receive the money will depend on when they are approved. If Congress okays them this month, the checks likely will not reach Americans until around the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, Hoagland said.

The timing could be tricky for the IRS to handle because it coincides with the start of the tax filing season, said Janet Holtzblatt, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

December is typically when the agency gets its systems ready for the coming tax season. If they also have to send more payments in December and early January, that could conflict with the start of the filing season in late January, she said.

“The timing in terms of the IRS workload is not great,” Holtzblatt said.

A more preferable way to distribute the payments would be to include them in the 2020 tax returns and then encourage people to file early electronically, she said. That could also help target the payments based on people’s financial situations in 2020, she added.

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If the government were to pursue that strategy, they would also have to suspend a hold on earned income tax credits and refundable child tax credits that often delays some refunds.

Changing the amount to $600 from $1,200 would not affect how quickly the payments are processed.

But changing qualifications for the checks — such as making it so that all dependents are eligible, not just children under 17 — could make it more difficult to reach some people quickly, Holtzblatt noted. Non-filers, in particular, would likely need to submit additional information to the IRS in order to get full payments including dependents.

The transition of one White House administration to another also prompts another question: Whose name will appear on the stimulus checks? The first round of $1,200 payments had Trump’s name printed on them.

The likely answer: The secretary of the Treasury, whose name has traditionally appeared on those kinds of payments.