“By any measure, this is a huge stimulus package. One thing that it cannot stop is the recession that is coming,” said James McCann, senior global economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments.

Economists say Congress’s response was too slow, too stingy and too focused on big Wall Street firms during the Great Recession, and that prevented a faster turnaround. Many analysts say Congress deserves some credit for doing better this time. This relief package is more than double the $830 billion measure that Congress passed in 2009. It came together in a few days, and it’s far more targeted at Main Street.

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Middle-class and low-income Americans are slated to receive $1,200 checks (more for people with children). Small-business owners will soon have access to $10,000 emergency grants and millions in loans. And additional money is set aside for the unemployed. Only about a quarter of the money will go to large companies this time, including billions earmarked for Boeing and airlines.

But economists say two key problems remain: fixing the health crisis and getting money to people in time.

Constance Hunter, chief economist at KPMG, predicts that it will take at least six to 10 weeks for the government to disburse a significant amount of the money. That’s a long time for laid-off workers and small-business owners with no money coming in to wait. It makes it less likely that they will bounce back quickly.

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“There isn’t some magic restart button for the economy,” Hunter said. “Before the money arrives, there will be a lot of collateral damage to the economy. That’s going to make restarting it difficult."

James Bullard, a noted economist and head of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, put out a chilling forecast of what’s ahead for the nation in the coming months: He expects 46 million Americans to be unemployed (30 percent of workers) and an unprecedented 50 percent decline in economic output.

Trump has floated the idea of getting people back to work by April 12. Yet public health officials say that they don’t think that is realistic and that going back too soon could cause a second spike in coronavirus cases and deaths, forcing more shutdowns.

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The nation is choosing to shut down much of the economy to save lives, maybe as many as hundreds of thousands, according to one estimate. The United States has to get the pandemic under control before daily life and business can go back to anything remotely normal. It’s still a big unknown how long that will take.

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Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared on the Senate floor Wednesday that “this is not even a stimulus package; it is emergency relief.” Economists agree. This $2 trillion isn’t about boosting the economy; it’s about trying to compensate people for what could be $2.5 trillion in lost business and wages in the coming weeks. And that’s a best-case scenario. Losses will be deeper if the pandemic lasts into the summer.

To prevent a depression, the relief payments have to get to workers and business owners fast enough to prevent a chain reaction of pain where one person goes out of business and that triggers another failure and another.

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Bullard, the St. Louis Fed president, is optimistic that the economy will bounce back in the second half of 2020. He compares this to driving a car 70 miles per hour on the highway and then having to slow to a crawl for a construction zone. The hope is that the car can regain speed quickly, after exiting the construction zone, but it’s not a given.

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“It’s not enough to have Congress pass something or to have the Fed put new programs into place to preserve liquidity, it’s actually the execution of those programs” that matters, he said.

To get a reality check on what’s happening to the U.S. economy, call a small-business owner. Nearly all will tell you that business is severely down — or closed — and that they have no clue when that will change. In recent days, most of these owners have talked to anyone they can think of — bankers, insurers, politicians, friends, customers, Small Business Administration officials — about getting a loan or aid. But everyone is waiting to see what Congress does first, leaving business owners fearful that they will run out of money before help arrives.

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John Russell co-founded Webconnex, at small tech company, in 2008, but he says this crisis is even harder to navigate than the Great Recession, because it’s so uncertain when it will end and whether the recovery will be fast or slow. His company, which employs 41 people, makes affordable software for fundraising and events and processed about $1 billion in credit card payments last year. Now most of its 2020 events are canceled, leaving almost no money coming in.

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“If we don’t get relief from this bill in Congress, we have no choice but to do massive layoffs,” Russell said. “Our team is like our family. For us, 100 percent of our focus is on saving those jobs.”

Russell has taken an ax to his budget. Advertising spending is gone. He cut up the credit cards. The company managed to end its lease in Sacramento at the end of the month. All trips are canceled. Those decisions are already rippling across the economy, cutting revenue for other businesses.

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If he has to lay off employees, like so many restaurants and hotels have, Russell knows the pain will escalate. But taking on a hefty loan right now feels risky, given the uncertainty.

It’s a similar story for many states and cities hit hardest by the pandemic. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) is furious about the latest congressional package, saying that about $4 billion in aid is not nearly enough as the state tries to battle the virus and bolster health care and safety personnel during the crisis.

“I’m telling you these numbers don’t work,” Cuomo said to reporters.