What was passed wasn't economic stimulus. It was paying people to safely stay at home.
Stimulus would be paying people to stimulate more demand (which may happen, but it will be after the economy opens up again).
The economy may not seem "stimulated" compared to where it was a year ago - but it is certainly "stimulated" compared to what it would have been if the additional checks didn't go out and a much larger swath of the population missed rent, car payments, or credit card bills.
By that definition, every single bill that passes appropriations sends money to someone and therefore "stimulates the economy".
I still don't think stimulus was the impetus there. Compassion for those who lost their job, a desire to avoid/mitigate social instability, and reinforcement for people to follow the directions of health professionals.
As far as I can tell, this is the bill/law[1]. No mention of stimulus in the title or abstracts.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6199...
There is no mention of the bill, either in the law itself or in discussions, that this would somehow reduce transmission by encouraging people to stay home.
Trump: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/22/coronavirus-stimulus-trump-w...
Mnuchin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoEsSwxKGtk
Pelosi: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/05/12/nancy-pelosi-...
McConnell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHGSQCMZSt4
Sanders: https://www.masslive.com/coronavirus/2020/05/bernie-sanders-...
Biden: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-26/biden-ass...
Both Bernanke (former chair of Fed) and Krugman (Nobel winner) have called the programs to date "disaster relief".
Many people cannot work because of the lockdowns, but still need to pay rent and food and such, so the checks are to bridge that gap.
> Plus a second wave of infections from premature opening could set recovery back a long, long time. What we need is to stay the course and keep disaster relief in place. Unfortunately, little sign that Trump and allies will do that 5/
* https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1260557224860155906
> To deal with this properly, however, we need to get past standard rhetoric. The economy is, in effect, in a deliberately induced coma—and necessarily so. So this isn’t about “job creation” or economic growth; we don’t need “stimulus.” What we need is disaster relief on an unprecedented scale, to get people through the shutdown with as little misery as possible.
* https://www.92y.org/event/paul-krugman
* https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/opinion/coronavirus-econo...