The recession could have ended in January.
Just declare a one-year moratorium on all federal taxes. Economic activity would have exploded. Cost = less than the various stimulus packages.
Of course, this approach would have empowered actual people, not government. So it wasn’t even considered by anybody in Congress, not even the Republicans.
I’m sure there would have been some negative economic consequences to such a policy, but I’m not an economist, so I have no idea what they would be.
Not quite accurate.
The GOP negotiators, lead by Eric Cantor, advocated business tax cuts in place of the stimulus spending at the White House meeting in January. Dear Reader told them "No, I won the election we are not going to do that".