President Donald Trump

The US Treasury Department ordered the Internal Revenue Service to mark the cheques with President Trump’s signature on Monday evening.

The order could cause the checks to be delayed by several days or longer, senior agency officials told The Washington Post.

The decision will mark the first time in history that a president’s name has ever appeared on an IRS disbursement. Usually, presidents’ names don’t appear on cheques issued by the Treasury Department in order to keep such payments non-partisan.

Now, President Trump’s name will appear on the memo line appearing left side of the stimulus check.

Administration officials, who spoke anonymously to the publication because they weren’t authorised to publicly discuss the matter, said that President Trump had originally asked Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to allow him to formally sign the checks, but the president isn’t legally authorized to do so.

The stimulus cheques, otherwise known as Economic Impact Payments, were included in the $2.2 trillion stimulus package passed by Congress and signed by President Trump in March 2019.

The cheques are intended to lighten the financial burden now facing more than six million American workers who’ve lost jobs or wages due to the coronavirus epidemic.