Edward J. McCaffery is Robert C. Packard trustee chair in law and a professor of law, economics and political science at the University of Southern California. He is the author of "Fair Not Flat: How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler" and founder of the People's Tax Page. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN) We face a frightening pandemic. More than 100,000 American have been infected with Covid-19, while tens of millions more continue to shelter at home. Meanwhile, the markets are crashing.

Edward J. McCaffery

And yet the more things change, the more they stay the same.

While health care workers and local governments frantically race against the clock to keep up with the escalating medical caseloads while trying to keep themselves and their families safe, Congress was still able to find the time to give money away to rich people

Thanks to a stunning new report from the New York Times , which has been relentless on the tax beat during the Trump administration, we've learned that a provision has been included in the 880-page coronavirus stimulus bill to help the very wealthy in a way that is breathtaking in its scope and detail.

It is worth taking a minute -- many of us have more of those now in our quarantined states -- to explain.