Why the New Covid Relief Bill Is Something to Celebrate

Democrats got almost everything they wanted in the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer after the Senate voted 50–49 to pass the American Rescue Plan Act. Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

The tendency to poke holes in everything and to focus on what went wrong (or what didn’t go right) is a difficult one to resist, especially in the age of social media. But that’s a tendency you should absolutely resist when it comes to the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill that the Senate just passed, and that Joe Biden will soon be signing into law. This is a genuinely impressive and important bill. It will not only bring much-needed relief in the form of $1,400 checks for every member of a family and give unemployed workers extra benefits for the next six months, but it will also put a significant dent in the U.S. poverty rate, particularly the child poverty rate. If you compare it to the stimulus bill that Democrats passed in 2009, soon after Barack Obama took office, the Covid bill is more than twice as big and far more progressive in its impact (meaning it’s better targeted at people who need help). And perhaps the most impressive thing about this bill is that it got through Congress without being watered down.

To be sure, there were a few changes that were made to the bill in the Senate, largely, it seems, to keep Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on board. The most important of those…