Now, states face plummeting tax revenue and new costs tied to treatment of the virus. Republicans blocked Democratic requests to add more money for states in the latest rescue legislation, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Wednesday that “there’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations” and that states should consider filing for bankruptcy if necessary.

The ground may also be shifting on programs to encourage businesses to keep making payroll.

Controversies that have emerged around programs to support small businesses suggest that the politics of industry bailouts are becoming more toxic. Outcry over some midsize companies that obtained forgivable loans through the Paycheck Protection Program suggests that public stigma and political blowback could be attached to taking advantage of the federal rescue — which could undermine the ability of the program to fulfill its goal of preventing layoffs even as Congress scales up its size.

“Identifying individual companies and trying to paint a picture of a program that’s not doing well does suggest that the kind of bailout fatigue that existed 12 years ago is lurking very close to the surface and may even be popping up above the surface,” said Michael Strain, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Finally, Congress has repeated another behavior from the global financial crisis: relying to an extraordinary degree on the Federal Reserve to carry out steps aimed at fixing the economy, rather than taking direct action itself.

In 2008, that meant the Bush administration relied on the Fed to rescue Bear Stearns and AIG; in 2009, it meant the Obama administration used a Fed program to support lending as a key part of its crisis response. For years thereafter, as Congress refrained from new fiscal action, the Fed enacted quantitative easing to try to keep the economy on track.

The Fed has a lot of strengths. It is run by capable technocrats, can act quickly, and has the unique capacity to create dollars out of thin air. But it also has limitations. Its tools generally work through financial markets, which means it is better at improving financial conditions generally than at helping individual industries that are experiencing problems.

And though it has wide authority to lend money to solvent borrowers, it is not legally allowed to spend money — for example, to directly pay businesses to keep their payrolls high, or to send money to individuals.