Nearly since the passage of the American Rescue Plan, which made possible a third major round of stimulus checks, there have been calls for a fourth round. A group of Senators wrote a letter in March calling for that, and some House members joined with another letter, earlier this month.

However, the calls for another check have always been something of an uphill battle. The checks in 2020 went out during the heights of the coronavirus emergency, while the American Rescue Plan was meant to serve as a new president’s attempt to aid the emergence from that pandemic.

Now, a new analysis says that the rising economic fortunes in the U.S. are making the fourth round of stimulus checks less likely.

Motley Fool argued Tuesday that another round of stimulus is “growing increasingly less likely by the day,” due to much better economic news of late.

“Coronavirus vaccines are widely available, and a large chunk of the U.S. population has already gotten a jab,” the Fool piece said. “Meanwhile, the economy is heading in a positive direction itself. In fact, according to CNN Business' Back-to-Normal Index, which was developed in partnership with Moody's Analytics last year, the U.S. economy is actually mostly recovered -- it's 90% of the way back to where it was before the pandemic began. By contrast, the index had reached a low of 57% in April of 2020.”

Those numbers are expected to improve even more by the fall when students in most of the country are likely to return to in-person school.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t be any more help from the government. The payments from the expanded child tax credit will begin rolling out in July. Also, the Biden Administration is pursuing a pair of large spending packages, including the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan. The latter plan would extend that child tax credit to 2025. However, the Biden Administration has not proposed direct stimulus checks as part of either of those spending plans, and it doesn’t appear the votes are there in Congress to pass them.

“Of course, it's easy to argue that a fourth stimulus check could help fuel the economy's recovery even more, all the while allowing consumers to retain their buying power in the face of recent inflation,” the Fool article concludes. “But given that President Biden is already facing his share of criticism for the $1.9 trillion price tag attached to his most recent relief bill, he'll likely adopt a more conservative approach to dishing out aid going forward. As such, it may be time to finally put the idea of a fourth stimulus check to rest.”

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.