The next round of coronavirus relief funding has gone through a lot of different names.

First, there was the Heroes Act, then the Heels Act.

Eventually, last week, there was a bill many just called the skinny relief package.

That's because it had been whittled down from two or three trillion dollars to a few

hundred billion.

But something none of these bills is going to be called is a law.

How many weeks, months have folks in Washington been trying to pass a coronavirus relief package at this point?

A new one?

Well, it depends.

Who is trying?

How are we going to define trying?

Jordan Weissman covers the economy for Slate.

He's been watching this back and forth from the beginning.

I recently called up some member or emailed some members of Congress to be like,

is there any chance this bill would just get a vote on its own, maybe, as part of like

not a giant package?

And they were like, didn't even respond.

They were just like, oh, you sweet naive summer child.

Partisan delays in Washington aren't exactly new.

But Jordan says, to understand why this legislation is getting stuck, you just have to go back to March or April, the beginning of the pandemic.

Early on in this crisis, we were making comparisons to the 1930s, right?

I mean, people just were, people were freaking out. And in the end, the absolute most dire predictions did not come to pass. Instead, states have sort of gone and gradually reopened, and we've seen many kinds of jobs return.

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