The CARES Act is a Frankenstein's Monster originally introduced in 2019
The narrative in the media is that, at the 11th hour, Congressional leaders along with President Trump came together to make a deal on the $2 trillion Coronavirus relief bill, the CARES Act, and that it passed the Senate on March 25, 2020, and then the House of Representatives on March 27, 2020 and was then signed by President Trump on the same day.
This is not quite right, however.
Looking at the CARES Act on Congress.gov we can see that it was originally introduced to the House of Representatives in January 2019 by Representative Joe Courtney, and was originally passed by the House in July 2019.
Rather than passing a new, clean bill, the Senate took the bill that had already passed the House almost a year earlier, amended it to fit the purposes of the Coronavirus pandemic, and then sent it back to the House which approved the Senate amendments via an unrecorded voice vote before going to Trump's desk for his signature.
I'm not trying to suggest any weird conspiracy theory regarding the Coronavirus by pointing this out, but I think it does highlight the critique many of us have with this bill. This bill was obviously not originally intended for Coronavirus relief, and, simply put, we don't know all of what else was put in this bill that nobody would ever want and wouldn't otherwise be able to be passed without cover of an emergency.
What most people wanted was a simple bill that gave cash payments to American workers to get them through the pandemic, and the only debate they were interested in having was over what level of income someone would have to make to no longer be eligible for such a payment. What we got was a $2 trillion bill that pays $1250 per person. The math simply doesn't add up.
(11/11) 2 trillion divided by 150 million workers is about $13,333.00 per person. That’s much more than the $1,200 per person check authorized by this bill.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 27, 2020
According to Congressman Thomas Massie, this is some of what else was in the bill:
(5/11) This bill should have been voted on much sooner in both the Senate and House and it shouldn’t be stuffed full of Nancy Pelosi’s pork- including $25 million for the Kennedy Center, grants for the National Endowment for the Humanities and Arts, and millions more
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 27, 2020
(6/11) other measures that have no direct relation to the Coronavirus Pandemic. That $25 million, for example, should go directly to purchasing test kits. The number one priority of this bill should have been to expand testing availability and creation of tests
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 27, 2020
This is not to mention the businesses that will be getting a bailout, such as Boeing, as opposed to the ones who will not, as pointed out by Congressman Justin Amash.
https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1243525837992996868
And how did some of these bailed out businesses and organizations respond to being given taxpayer money? Predictably.
https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/1243624566125182977
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1244009137664647168
So why couldn't they simply pass a clean bill for giving Americans a check, that certainly would not have racked up $2 trillion in additional debt? They wouldn't have been able to pass all the other garbage that they wanted to pass to benefit their favored donors and constituents without that carrot dangling in front of the American people.
That's the problem with allowing the federal government to push through legislation with no debate and no time to think during an emergency, and why Congressman Massie's attempt to force them to be accountable for their votes was heroic even though it ultimately failed.