The initial response to the pandemic was just a bit more than $8 billion, so-called Phase 1, which consisted mainly of health and emergency management activities. The next bill, so-called Phase 2 and negotiated primarily between Speaker Pelosi and Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin, was more than a dozen times larger than Phase 1 and encompassing much broader scale, from making testing easier by ensuring there'd be no-cost to the patient, to requiring many employers to offer paid sick leave (and reimbursing them through tax credits), to waiving the liability for the use of N-95 construction masks for medical purposes. This package originated in the House, then was passed by the Senate on Wednesday, March 18, and signed by President Trump the same day.

That background provides context for the truly mammoth Phase 3 stimulus bill, another dozen times larger than Phase 2, so we're in the neighborhood of at least $1.5 trillion, or another 1/3 on top of the existing FY2020 budget. Only about 3/4's of that original budget was expected to be paid for, and that portion of the revenue associated with the original budget is out the window now because of the downturn we're already in. It can't be called a recession yet, because a recession is classified as two or more consecutive quarters of economic decline, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product, essentially the national output. Given that the quarter we're in now, ending March 31, will likely show a decline, just based on the final 2 weeks of the quarter, and the next quarter almost certainly will be much, much worse, then it's virtually a lock that we'll be determined within a few months from now to have been in a recession beginning (now) the first calendar quarter of 2020. That point, however, is truly academic. The reason I say so is that the prospective passage by Congress of a single piece of legislation--conceived, negotiated, and finalized within a couple of weeks, and valued at over a trillion dollars--means that we'd know we're in extraordinary economic times, even if we weren't experiencing that by driving around almost empty streets and seeing empty shelves in grocery stores, as though a snowstorm is approaching.

Using an economic approach, comment on the Phase 3 bill for COVID-19 crises