Much of the rest of the spending is not well-suited, or even designed, to respond to current economic conditions, which are increasingly favorable.
Democrats are telling themselves that it’s like 1933, when we were in the midst of a depression, whereas it’s more like 1983, when we were coming out of a punishing recession.
Or to put it another way, the Biden bill is reacting to the wrong spring. It is no longer the cataclysmic spring of 2020, with the economy shuttered and nothing to fight the virus except social distancing and masks, but the much more hopeful spring of 2021, with the economy opening back up, Covid cases steeply declining and vaccinations ramping up massively.
Jobless claims have decreased, and the unemployment rate is 6.2 percent. Personal incomes are higher than when the pandemic started. Both the Congressional Budget Office and Goldman Sachs are projecting rapid economic growth in 2021.
As states open back up — and not just allegedly “Neanderthal” Texas, but deep-blue Connecticut — nearly 20 percent of the U.S. population has received at least one vaccination shot.
This isn’t to say that all is well. There is an estimated $420 billion hole in the economy, although, as even center-left critics of the bill have noted, you don’t need a $1.9 trillion bill to fill it (besides the roughly $4 trillion in prior relief bills passed over the past 12 months, not all of which has been spent).
The latest bout of spending is spread around willy-nilly on Democratic priorities and constituencies.
Take public education, where Democratic-allied teacher unions dominate. It’s not clear why any additional spending is necessary, given that tens of billions of education funding from prior Covid relief bills are still unspent, even as many districts have already begun to reopen for in-person instruction.