Surely there is a huge difference in getting a one-time amount of "extra" money (which most people would see as a "present") and knowing you'll keep receiving the same amount of money regularly every month for a few years. Furthermore, I clearly remember when we got the covid assistance money a lot of it was to incentivise local spending to support local businesses (at least it was here in Japan, I admit I'm not American so the message maybe was different over there).