My conspiracy theory on slow government payment

[customerserviceguy]

7. That's tinfoil hat territory

The simplest explanation is that the government agencies tasked with handling the distribution of payments were caught flat-footed by a hastily written and passed bill. I used to be a tax accountant, and there were a lot of revisions to tax law in the 1980's, and even with bills taking months to go through Congress, it took the IRS quite some time to write regulations to deal with changes in the law.

Just comparing the taxpayer data base of people who have direct deposit of refunds with the data base of Social Security recipients is probably a programmer's nightmare.