I agree with your comment on the competition. We’re headed the wrong way. When I have the choice of “pay now or pay later”, I generally choose “pay now” (or pay before it comes due). I use credit as a tool and realize it comes at a price. One thing I almost never do is use credit for something I can’t afford to pay cash for (if I can’t pay cash for it, I USUALLY don’t need it.) Now there are clearly exceptions to the rule. However, with our politicians, pay later has become the rule with no exceptions.

I understand “it takes money to make money” and I understand macro-economics. Theoretically, the more money the government puts back into circulation, the quicker the recovery. Also, printing more money devalues the dollar so the debt stays close to the same actual debt WRT the GDP and other key indices. However, what most people fail to realize is that the inflation this will cause is not controlled by an off/on switch. The tools for controlling inflation have been nearly exhausted by previous administrations.

It appears to most experts that there are only 2 options and one is political suicide to anybody that proposes it. The option they have chosen is to dig our way out of the pit we’ve gotten ourselves into because of irresponsible stewardship of the taxpayer dollars. They know this leads to the ultimate demise of our country as we know it, but they can ‘kick the can down the road’ for our children and grandchildren to deal with. They don’t care, because they’ll be dead and buried before that time comes.

The only other option they can see is a dirty word, “Austerity.” This is the option they’ve passed on to our children and grandchildren. Austerity is only survivable in times of existential crisis (e.g. WWII) and with a United and strong government and a responsible (not spoiled) electorate.

I expect better from Trump. He knows there are more than just 2 options. He can still pull this off if he uses the money wisely, investing in the future and insuring there are dividends for our children/grandchildren to use to reduce the pain of the austerity they will inevitably inherit. (e.g. Loans to those profitable businesses providing jobs and needed products, T bills, infrastructure maintenance, value added projects like business incubators, etc... to name just a few).

There needs to be a plan to not only repay (quickly) this $2T, but also to repay the folly of previous decades. (i.e. the whole $24T). This is his opportunity to use his greatest tool (not the Military, but the “Bully Pulpit” and his business acumen) to prove we made the right decision in putting him into office. This is his opportunity to build a legacy that will never be destroyed. Successfully repairing the irreparably broken will bring this nation back together and unite us as the great nation God ordained us to be.

The only "need" for this package, we created ourselves.

If it weren't for the Kung Flu's P.R. team, those who have been actively trying to get a good crisis going for years now... we wouldn't even know it was out there; and we'd be well on our way to herd-immunity by now.
All we would've known was that the flu was a little bad this year...

We're freaking out and trashing the global economy because we have no sense of perspective. That's just dumb & irresponsible, and has already caused significant hardship, suffering, and certainly deaths of its own around the world; and that damage will continue and persist long after the "crisis" is over.

In America, 500 deaths from the Kung Flu is about one one-hundredth of the deaths we see in a normal year... every year... from the hundreds of viruses that cause flu and pneumonia; it hasn't even moved the needle.
This one's not done yet... but this is what new viruses do. It's going to run rampant because it is meeting no resistance in our immune systems.
THAT is how we establish that resistance for next time...
Hiding in our toilet-paper forts while the government brings us cheese doesn't allow that herd-immunity to develop. All it does is give the medical community some breathing room... at the expense of herd immunity.
Flattening the curve just widens the curve.
As a result, we'll be doing this all over again to some extent, when it re-emerges; probably in the Fall as the weather turns. That one will last all Winter long if we try to "hide it out", unless they come up with a vaccine before Spring.
And the more we hamstring ourselves and squander what prosperity we've accrued, the less capable we will be of completing the research, mass producing a vaccine, and mobilizing it globally before it just runs its course anyway.
That kind of thing is only even possible because of the very economy that we are ironically sacrificing out of blind panic... because "people are DYING!"
Orders of magnitude more people were dying each year, every year, throughout all of human history until a thriving Capitalist economy began lifting people out of squalor all over the globe.
Bringing those days back doesn't sound like a rational response to a bug that's going around.
Preserving a thriving global economy is a far more consequential public health concern than this season's new virus; one of hundreds.