What's in the $1.9 Trillion House COVID Relief Bill?

Feb 18, 2021 - Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

The House of Representives is currently in the process of considering the next COVID relief bill. Nine of the 12 House committees have approved legislation. Below, we summarize the major elements of the $1.9 trillion plan.

This legislation is largely similar to President Biden's "American Rescue Plan." It contains a third round of stimulus checks, extension of enhanced unemployment benefits, additional tax credits for families and workers, funding for K-12 education, and support for state and local governments. Smaller, but-significant, expenditures include funds for COVID testing and vaccines, grants to small businesses, support for child care providers, assistance for colleges, and rental and homelessness assistance.

A few differences exist: the House plan shortens the unemployment extension by one month and adds grants to multiemployer pensions. It also earmarks some of the small business aid for restaurants, provides grants to airlines and airports, and contains more targeted expansions to Medicaid, but does not contain cybersecurity funding.

Source: CRFB calculations from Congressional Budget Office and House Budget Committee documents

This table shows the deficit impact of various provisions, which may differ slightly from the total amount of aid offered. For instance, $50 billion is allocated to the Disaster Relief Fund, but CBO estimates that only $47 billion will ultimately be spent, based on past precedent. As another example, there are $15 billion in loans and grants given to airlines, but the previous version of this bill has led CBO to conclude that $3 billion will ultimately be repaid or given to the government as stock as a condition of accepting the support.

*The total removes $14 billion from COBRA subsidies and funding for LIHEAP that are shared between two committees and would be double-counted if summing each committee's total.

The summary table above shows the total deficit impact of the provisions over the 2021-2031 budget window, although the reconciliation instructions that constrain each committee's section are for a slightly different measure: on-budget deficits through 2030, which excludes any impacts in the final year and excludes impacts to Social Security. The table below shows how the committees align with their reconciliation instructions.

In total, the bills together would increase on-budget deficits through 2030 by $1.94 trillion, which is slightly higher than the total envisioned for the House and Senate bills of $1.889 trillion. The overall bill will need to be made about $50 billion less costly in order to comply with reconciliation instructions in the Senate and be eligible to pass with a simple majority.

Because the bill is being enacted through reconciliation, each committee's bill is limited to a maximum cost specified in the budget resolution enacted earlier this month. The committee instructions are somewhat larger than the total to account for overlap in jurisdictions between committees. Although a few committees would have room to add additional policies and stay within their instructions, other committees would have to reduce the size of their sections to keep the overall size of the bill to $1.889 trillion, which is the sum of the instructions given to Senate committees.

*This total differs from the above table because the deficit measure used for compliance with the reconciliation instructions ends in 2030 (one year before the end of the traditional 10-year scoring window) and excludes off-budget revenue and spending, such as Social Security.