Congress is finally wising up to the scale of the coronavirus disaster — with 1 big exception

Since late February, Congress and President Trump have passed three bills in response to the coronavirus pandemic: A modest $8.3 billion investment in the public health response, then about $100 billion to beef up food stamps, state Medicaid budgets, unemployment benefits, and provide some limited paid leave. The third package, the CARES Act, was a whopping $2.2 trillion in aid that threw gobs of money at American households and businesses alike.

Now Congress is discussing a fourth bill — "CARES 2" as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.) is calling it — that could "easily" clear $1 trillion. This is good news: As gargantuan as the third phase was, it's already proving itself to be grossly inadequate. And the ideas both parties are throwing out for the fourth iteration are surprisingly reasonable. Up to a point, anyway.

As of Monday, Democrats were pushing for a number of items: A further increase in unemployment benefits and more direct cash aid to American households. There weren't hard numbers yet, but those policies will need to be in the hundreds of billions. Democrats are also looking at about $250 billion to help out budgets for smaller city and town governments. These measures would all repeat aspects of the CARES Act, which sent a one-time payment of $1,200 to millions of Americans, added an additional $600 per week to unemployment benefits for the next four months (while opening unemployment benefits up to gig workers and independent contractors) and gave $130 billion to hospital systems as well as $150 billion for state and local budgets.

The thing is, the crisis has come so hard and fast that these moves, as admirable as they were, are already inadequate. Between March 14 and 28, almost 10 million Americans filed for jobless claims. State unemployment insurance systems have been overwhelmed, and former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen reportedly told Pelosi the true unemployment rate (that government statistics just haven't caught up to yet) is likely 13 percent — higher than the Great Recession's peak of 10 percent. State and local budgets, which cannot deficit spend the way the federal government can, are already looking at massive spending cuts to offset the tax revenue losses. A one-time cash stipend will not be enough — it will need to be repeated several times — and America's unemployment insurance systems will need to provide more help longer as well. As for state and local governments, they spend about $3.7 trillion a year in total, so a $400 billion infusion between the two packages seems like the bare minimum.