This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 19th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Congress has moved relatively swiftly to beef up safety net authorities and unemployment benefits

as a national emergency declaration has unlocked presidential authority.

Meanwhile states and the feds have moved swiftly to undo regulations that have hampered

emergency responses by both the public and private sector.

Cato's Will Yeagman comments.

Congress is continuing to work on either a stimulus package or writing checks to all adult Americans,

but this was of course not their first legislative action in response to COVID-19.

What has Congress done so far as of this recording?

Well, as of this recording? Well as of this recording they're working on their third measure.

So a couple weeks ago they actually passed a first measure of 8.3 billion billion directed specifically at the medical supply chain if you will.

I mean from hospitals to everything else.

Subsequently they passed a sort of a mini stimulus that in essence expanded and

beefed up, if you will, existing social safety net factors or policies and currently they're

sort of working on a big kick and caboodle so you know after starting with

sort of a targeted plant you know that

first measure targeted it at the the health supply chain per se the second measure

is sort of beefing up existing safety net authorities and

currently they're working on sort of this grand stimulus-esque trillion- dollar measure to keep the economy or to respond in an economic

fashion to the economic damage that's been wrought by the response to COVID.

What powers have been unlocked for the president with respect to this, which is, I think,

...