March 15, 2021 Update: COVID Money Tracker includes the aggregate effect of the American Rescue Plan, but our estimates of amount disbursed may lag for the next few weeks as we add additional detail and policies from the latest bill.

COVID Money Tracker

Explore the data and track the trillions of dollars of federal spending, tax cuts, loans, grants, and subsidies authorized and disbursed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis.

Tracking the COVID Response

$0
$1
$2
$3
$4
$5
$6
Trillions of Dollars

Federal Reserve Actions

$6.0 $6.0 trillion
$2.9 $2.9 trillion

Legislative Actions

$6.0 $6.0 trillion
$3.7 $3.7 trillion

Administrative Actions

$0.9 $0.9 trillion
$0.5 $0.5 trillion
Amount Disbursed / Committed
Amount Allowed
Latest Deficit Projections
  • Interactive Table
  • Visualization

Track the COVID Money

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis, policymakers have approved trillions of dollars of fiscal and monetary support. Use the table below to explore how those dollars have been allocated and disbursed or view this information through our interactive visualization.

Explore Visualization

Research and Analysis

American Rescue Plan

Four Key Elements of the American Rescue Plan

In light of the ongoing pandemic and economic crisis, there has been strong interest in pursuing further spending to expand vaccinations, contain the pandemic, reopen schools, and extend expiring unemployment benefits. About a quarter of the House version of the American Rescue Plan would be spent on these four key elements, including less than 1 percent on vaccines and vaccinations. Meanwhile, more than half of the bill would be spent on state and local aid (which we have shown is likely excessive), broad rebates for most households, and long-standing policy priorities not specifically related to the current crisis. The remainder of the bill would consist of a combination of tax and spending policies, many of which provide targeted economic aid. In this piece we breakdown spending on these four key elements in the bill.

Read the Analysis

Targeting Relief

Five Ways to Improve the House COVID Relief Package

Recently, we put forward our principles for responsible COVID relief. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan currently under consideration in the House includes a number of important policies to help end the pandemic, provide much-needed relief to struggling households, and support a strong economic recovery. Unfortunately, it falls short on many of our principles — it is much larger than the needs of the economy, much of its spending is poorly targeted, it includes a number of measures unrelated to the COVID pandemic and economic crisis, and it would abruptly cut off aid to unemployed workers at the end of August (see our summary here).

Fortunately, policymakers in the House and Senate still have an opportunity to address these concerns. The following adjustments would dramatically improve the composition of the package and ensure sufficient COVID relief is enacted at a net cost of about $1.3 trillion. We believe additional reforms could easily reduce the size of the package further to about $1.1 trillion.

In this piece, we suggest that policymakers: 

  1. Remove or offset unrelated policies. 

  2. Right-size state and local aid to match need. 

  3. Better target rebates based on need. 

  4. Extend and taper expanded unemployment benefits. 

  5. Establish triggers so aid matches needs of the economy. 

Read the Analysis