Between March 2020 and March 2021, Congress passed about $6 trillion in spending that, at least in theory, was intended as pandemic relief. The first $4 trillion was passed with bipartisan support under President Donald Trump, but the final tranche was passed early in President Joe Biden's presidency on an entirely partisan basis. Biden, with the help of then-new Democratic majorities in Congress, wrote and passed what would become a $2 trillion spending bill, the American Rescue Plan (ARP), that the White House billed as a "comprehensive plan to address the public health crisis and resulting economic crisis."
Biden specifically rejected a counteroffer from a group of Republicans that would have spent less than $1 trillion, saying that the only risk was spending too little, not too much. Democrats went big, and their ambitions weren't in any way checked by Republicans.
