The covid relief bill is indeed a crap sandwich. All bills now are. The size and scope of government is the problem; there's a case to be made that the earmark ban actually effectuates MORE pork barrel spending.

The question isn't whether this bill is a crap sandwich, then. It's whether it should have passed. Frankly, Congress was going to pass a covid relief bill, and Republicans got way more of what they wanted than Democrats did. McConnell simply outnegotiated Pelosi and Schumer.

That doesn't mean the bill is good. The original CARES Act wasn't good. The original PPP program was tremendously flawed. There's a solid case to be made that all covid relief should be state-based rather than federal thanks to differential covid lockdown standards.

But as long as we're going to have federal covid relief, it would be nice if people wouldn't buy the dumbest headlines. The bill provides FAR more than $600 in direct relief. It provides another $300B in PPP loans, which will be used to pay employees. It provides extended UI.