By Stephen Moore –
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Congress has enacted four spending bills—so far. The Congressional Budget Office estimates their cost at roughly $2.1 trillion, of which nearly $1.6 trillion is new spending. That’s on top of $4.7 trillion that was already in the pipeline to be spent this year by the federal government, which brings the total to $6.3 trillion.
But Congress isn’t done with the spending blitz. On May 15 the House passed the Heroes Act, an acronym for Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions. Heroes has a lot of zeros: The bill would spend $3 trillion, which would bring total federal spending to $9.3 trillion. No one expects it to pass the Senate, but many Senate Republicans and some in the White House are negotiating a compromise that could cost $1.5 trillion. If that number holds up, Congress will have spent $7.8 trillion this year.
That doesn’t count state and local government. The best estimates of these budgets come from the Census Bureau. In 2018 the total—excluding money received from Washington—was roughly $2.4 trillion. Discount that by $200 billion for Covid-induced shortfalls, add it all up, and the total price tag comes to $10 trillion. The CBO’s April estimate for total 2020 GDP is $20.4 trillion.
Government spending as a share of GDP would be 48%. Under the Pelosi bill it would be 51.5%—more than half. That’s never happened. Even in 1943-45, at the height of World War II, government spending was a bit under 50%.
Read more in the Wall Street Journal.
