Did a late December US ‘omnibus’ spending bill combine routine expenditures with coronavirus relief measures?
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
By Emanuela Podda Ankrom
Copy link
Copy featured image
YES
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, signed into law in late December 2020, included both routine government funding as well as measures extending or replacing economic relief Congress enacted in March in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Coronavirus relief measures accounted for $900 billion of funding in the $2.3 trillion omnibus spending package. The remainder was allocated to other government needs and commitments, both foreign and domestic, leading some reports to confuse those measures with specific economic-relief provisions.
For instance, the bill funded foreign-aid to Israel, Sudan, Jordan and other states, among a wide variety of measures sought by certain legislators, lobbyists and interest groups.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.
FACT BRIEF BY
