The $2 trillion-plus coronavirus pandemic relief bill speeding toward passage would be the largest single piece of legislation lawmakers have ever approved in terms of expenditures.
“Certainly, in nominal dollars, we have never spent this much in one piece of legislation,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
“This is the biggest stimulus we’ve ever passed … actually by a pretty long shot,” said Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
The legislation is aimed at relieving workers and businesses forced to stop work because of the pandemic. The measure passed the Senate on Wednesday, and the House is expected to approve the bill on Friday. President Trump is expected to sign the measure into law.
“This is certainly, in terms of dollars, by far and away the biggest ever, ever done, and that’s a tremendous thing because a lot of this money goes to jobs, jobs, jobs and families, families, families,” President Trump said Wednesday.
The bill has not received a score from the Congressional Budget Office yet, meaning there is no official estimate of how much it will cost the government. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an outside group that advocates for lower deficits, estimated that it would cost $2.3 trillion.
The bill includes a one-time tax rebate check of $1,200 per individual and $500 per child for those with a valid Social Security number. Employers can delay the payment of their 2020 payroll taxes until 2021 and 2022. It includes $250 billion to expand unemployment benefits, authorizes $377 billion in small-business loans and grants, and provides $140 billion in appropriations to support the country’s health system, according to the House Ways and Means Committee.
The CBO projected in January that the federal government will collect $3.6 trillion in revenue this year, meaning that the revenue for the relief bill will account for over half of all federal receipts projected for 2020 before the crisis hit.
One way of comparing the legislation to past measures is by expressing it in dollars to the Gross Domestic Product.
The GDP in the fourth quarter of 2019 was $21.73 trillion. This means that the $2.3 trillion relief bill Congress is expected to approve will be roughly 9%.
No other bill approved by Congress has come close to this percentage, according to a Treasury Department report on the revenue effects of major pieces of legislation. In second place is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the Obama stimulus. It cost $840 billion and was considered expensive when it was enacted, but it was only 6% of the nation's GDP, which totaled $14.4 trillion in 2009.
In third place is the Revenue Act of 1942, which was 5% of GDP, according to the Treasury report. The bill funded the country’s effort to combat its enemies during World War II.
Legislation enacted during the Great Depression, known as the New Deal, accounted for 40% of GDP, but it was a series of bills and not a single piece of legislation.
“The New Deal was 40% of 1929 GDP. That’s unthinkably huge, but there was more than one bill,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right economic think tank American Action Forum and a former director of the CBO.
If the New Deal’s revenue cost was translated into current dollars, it would roughly be $700 billion, making it less expensive than the bill Congress is about to approve.
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March 27, 2020 at 11:00AM
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$2.3 trillion coronavirus relief bill would be the most expensive legislation ever enacted - Washington Examiner
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