No Agreement in Congress on Additional COVID-19 Relief
With negotiations over additional COVID-19 relief legislation falling apart, Senate Republicans are preparing to vote on their own $500 billion COVID-19 relief bill next week. The measure will include another round of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding, money for testing and hospitals, and protections for businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits. Senate Republicans had previously offered a $1.1 trillion coronavirus package in late July and tried again with a $500 billion bill in September. Neither bill passed the Senate.
The latest offer from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who has been negotiating on behalf of the White House with House Leader Nancy Pelosi for the past several weeks, comes with a $1.8 trillion price tag. This includes some reprogramming on state and local aid and using leftover funding for the Paycheck Protection Program. The comparable figure Democrats are seeking is roughly $2.2 trillion. President Trump signaled on Thursday that he was willing to go higher than the $1.8 trillion offered by Secretary Mnuchin, but that offer has fallen flat. The hang-up continues to be in the Senate, as Senate Republicans have struggled to get on the same page with the White House, especially in terms of a topline number for the next COVID-19 relief bill.
Senate Leader Mitch McConnell stated that while the Trump Administration may be willing to go above $1.8 trillion, Senate Republicans would not approve a bill beyond the proposed $500 billion that the Senate plans to take up next week. It appears that the widening chasm between what President Trump wants and what congressional Republicans are willing to accept has further reduced the likelihood that Congress will pass another COVID-19 relief package before Election Day.
Business Roundtable Announces Plans to Fight Historic Racial Injustice
This week, Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of 208 leading American companies, announced corporate initiatives and public policy recommendations to advance racial equity and justice. These initiatives and policy recommendations are focused on six primary issues: employment, finance, education, health, housing, and criminal justice. The recommendations are aimed at reducing the economic opportunity gap in communities of color, including disparities in access to financial tools and high-quality jobs, education and health care.
Business Roundtable members have set a goal of producing and preserving 200,000 affordable units by 2025, including in mixed-income communities, at a cost of $30 billion in funding. Additionally, Business Roundtable members are endorsing several housing policy recommendations, including doubling federal funding for existing affordable housing programs, such as the LIHTC, HTF, CDBG and the HOME Program, from $14 billion to $28 billion for fiscal years 2021-2026. Additionally, Business Roundtable members have requested reinstating HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, banning source of income discrimination at the federal level, and funding rental assistance, vouchers, and counseling for eviction and foreclosure prevention.
The Business Roundtable announcement can be viewed here.
The Business Roundtable housing policy recommendations can be viewed here.
Small Business Administration and Treasury Simplify Forgiveness Process on PPP Loans
Last week, the Department of the Treasury and the Small Business Administration released a simplified forgiveness application for Paycheck Protection Program loans under $50,000. The simplified form released on October 8 cuts the application’s size down from five pages to two, and surprisingly removes most of the questions aimed at ensuring that the loans were used for the program’s intended purposes of supporting payrolls and covering other fixed business costs. A bipartisan bill, the Paycheck Protection Small Business Forgiveness Act introduced by Senator’s Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), would replace the forgiveness applications for loans under $150,000 with a single attestation from the borrower that the funds were used properly. The Small Business Administration has already began approving Paycheck Protection Program loan forgiveness applications earlier this week.