In the past 12 months, most Coloradans have received one, two, or even three separate stimulus checks.
A family of four who received all of them would have raised just over $ 11,000.
However, that money for individuals is only a small fraction of the roughly $ 5 trillion in pandemic aid approved by Congress since its inception.
It started with the $ 2.2 trillion Cares Act, followed by the $ 900 billion Consolidated Appropriations Act, and finally the $ 1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.
The money should help families, businesses, and local governments meet their essentials and increase spending to support the economy.
However, almost everyone recently surveyed by KRDO Newschannel 13 did not know where that money was coming from.
Dr. Daniel Johnson, a professor of economics at Colorado College who specializes in public policy, says government spending comes from three sources:
-Tax income
– Loans (either from US or overseas lenders)
-Get money out of the Federal Reserve
“How do we fund this particular stimulus package? Well, it’s a combination of those,” he said.
While the exact percentage of each source in the recent stimulus packages is not clear, it is a certainty that the government will have to pay it back at some point.
Because of this, many Washington lawmakers and many of the citizens polled by KRDO believe that the stimulus programs have been too high.
Dr. Not so sure, however, Johnson says, “I think it was wise and I think the effects prove it.”
To support this, he points to unemployment, claiming that many economists feared the pandemic could easily have created the kind of unemployment that has not been seen since the Great Depression, when unemployment hit nearly 25%.
“We managed to bring the unemployment rate down from 15% last year to around 6%. That is remarkable by any historical norm in any country.”
Although prices of certain goods have increased due to issues related to the pandemic, overall inflation has increased only slightly as most of the new government money is used to support jobs and basic needs.
Dr. Johnson’s only real concern is the lack of time spent reviewing each page of these massive bills.
“It was short because the need was urgent,” he says.
However, despite the limited control, he believes that both the timing and the entirety of the stimulus rounds likely prevented a far more severe setback.
No additional stimulus calculations are expected.
President Joe Biden has instead shifted his focus to a massive trillion dollar transportation bill, which is not the same type of rescue operation but also serves to get people back to work while meeting huge infrastructure needs across the country .
