Is $1.9 trillion jolt a good viral stimulus?

It was close — both houses of Congress are very narrowly divided among the two major political parties — but it’s been decided: About $1.9 trillion will be allocated for new coronavirus relief spending during the ongoing pandemic. The measure must again pass the House and get President Biden’s signature, but that course has been cleared.

Is it too much government largesse, or perhaps too little — or is it just about right?

That’s our Question of the Week for readers.

Whatever your answer is, there isn’t any question but that it’s a whoppingly high number.

Americans have gotten used to the fact that we’re a big country and that our governments have big budgets. It’s been generations since powerful Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Illinois, is said to have remarked: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

But a trillion? That’s a thousand billion. During the earlier COVID-19 relief debate of last spring, Republicans and some moderate Democrats convinced their colleagues that there was no way they were going to vote for any package that had the “T word” in it — and so Congress passed “just” $900 billion in relief spending.

This time around, for Democrats at least, that hesitation was lost. It’s the T word times almost two.

Still, there were compromises. Swing-vote Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, forced the notion of a $15-anhour national minimum wage out of the package, for instance.

The bill passed by slim Democratic majorities with no Republican support is filled with government spending on three fronts: curtailing the pandemic, injecting spending money into a sluggish economy and protecting the poorest Americans hardest hit by the economic downturn.

That includes a new $300 weekly stipend for the unemployed. But even joint-filing families headed by couples making up to $150,000 a year will still be receiving $1,400 stimulus checks.

Is this what we need to turn the economy around, or is it foolhardy borrowing from future generations?

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