Returning the 10% poorest households to their February level of income would take $1.5 billion a month

See Yes, It Is Possible to Have Too Much Stimulus: Boosting stimulus checks to $2,000 would add a lot to the debt with little of that benefiting the unemployed by Greg Ip. Excerpts:

"the economy’s biggest problem isn’t demand, it is supply. Most Americans have money; they are just constrained in how they spend it because of pandemic-related business restrictions or fears.

Advocates say hard-working Americans deserve a bigger check. That misses the point of stimulus: by definition, most hard-working Americans have a paycheck. In fact, aggregate wages and salaries were just 0.4% lower in November than before the pandemic. Thanks to past stimulus, total income was actually 2% higher. It will be 13% higher once the new stimulus kicks in.

Yes, the economy is in bad shape. Total employment stands 9.8 million lower than in February. But leisure and hospitality accounts for a third of that deficit, and those jobs are unlikely to return until much of the population is vaccinated. How much the proposed $1,400 stimulus checks might accelerate the jobs recovery is debatable, given the healthy state of most consumers’ finances. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 60% of last spring’s $1,200 stimulus checks will eventually translate into higher economic output, and that might be an overestimate; one study found more than 80% of recipients either saved the money or used it to pay down debt."

"2.3 million more people were below the poverty line in November than February. About 2 million more mortgages are now delinquent than before the pandemic, according to Black Knight, a mortgage data provider."

"This hardship is overwhelmingly the result of people who lost work because of the pandemic"

"Because the pandemic fell hardest on low-paid workers, replacing their lost income isn’t that expensive. Returning the 10% poorest households to their February level of income would take $1.5 billion a month"

"Thanks mostly to a $600 bonus under the Cares Act, 75% of recipients earned more on UI than they did in their regular job"

"With the smaller, $300 bonus in the latest stimulus, roughly half will earn more"

"To get that back to 75% for 11 weeks could be done for about $20 billion"

"That would still leave gaps, for example revenue-strapped state and local governments. Helping them isn’t that big a lift: Their planned spending cuts this fiscal year come to $52 billion, a fraction of what Democrats wanted for a stimulus."

"As for the financial risks, we live in a world of probabilities, not certainties. While the probability of a nasty rise in inflation or interest rates is low, adding indiscriminately to the national debt leaves the country more exposed should they materialize—as low-probability outcomes sometimes do."