What has the Fed been doing to support the US economy during the pandemic?

The Federal Reserve has gone to incredible lengths to support the economy during the pandemic, where, to their credit, they have promised to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, until the economy recovers from the crisis.  They have actually been a little coy in what they have announced, because even if they have publicly said that they are doing $700 billion in new quantitative easing (QE) and created a whole bunch of new loan programs to help entities get through the crisis, quietly they have actually been doing much more by pumping trillions more into the economy, which has increased their bond holdings by $2.3 trillion and expanded their balance sheet by about $3 trillion overall.  The Brookings Institution created a nice summary of their efforts, and you can find a nice graph of the central bank's balance sheet over at Trading Economics, a website that has data on a bunch of useful economic indicators for countries all across the world. 

These extraordinary efforts helped us get through the first phase of the crisis, but now the question is whether the Fed should be doing even more now that a new round of stimulus is being negotiated.  My rule of thumb is that the Fed should be buying government bonds with printed money that pays for all the new debt the government is issuing at the very least, and like Japan has done in the past, they could even be buying substantially more debt than the government is issuing at any given time.  If they did this, then the overall debt held by the public would be declining and governments could feel free to spend, since there would be no fear of increasing the risk of a future debt crisis.  So far the Fed seems to be getting close to following through on this recommendation, where the first round of stimulus increased the expected deficit by $2.2 trillion for fiscal year 2020 (though the overall deficit will be considerably higher than that), and the central banks bought about $2.3 trillion billion in new bonds, but the new round of stimulus currently being negotiated could add trillions more to the deficit this year.  The Democrats have a plan that costs more than $3 trillion, and the Republicans are trying to create a plan that costs around $1 trillion, so in order to keep up the with the rise in the deficit, the Fed might have to boost their bond buying and money printing plans to keep up with the surge. 

So far the Federal Reserve has done an excellent job responding to the pandemic, but the economy still needs more stimulus and the federal government still hasn't provided all the funds state and local governments need to get through the crisis, so the Fed might need to do even more because of the latest round of negotiations.  Many Republicans in the Senate are starting to resist spending more money for fear of creating too much debt, so announcing a surge in new bond buying from the Fed could make it easier for them to agree to new measures. The Fed can't pass new legislation to have the federal government spend more money on the crisis, but they can make it easier for others to do so, and buying even more bonds with printed money could help in that effort.