Divisions remain over what should be included in future legislation, including how to address the Paycheck Protection Program, administered by the Small Business Administration, which allows companies to have their loans forgiven if they maintain payrolls at a certain level. The program enjoys bipartisan support, but it had a chaotic start and has drawn criticism both for criteria that were regarded as too broad — loans went to large, publicly traded firms — and rules that recipients said were too restrictive, barring them for using the money for their most pressing needs.
Small businesses, desperate for relief after closing their doors to slow the spread of the coronavirus, flooded the administration with applications, prompting Congress to inject an additional $320 billion in April. Two months later, lawmakers cleared a series of modifications to relax the terms of the program, including giving small businesses more time to spend the loan money. But without Congress’s action on Wednesday, the window for applying for the loans would remain shut.
Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, told lawmakers on Tuesday that he had been discussing the possibility of repurposing the funds left in the program for businesses whose revenues had dropped significantly, such as restaurants and hotels.
Democrats have proposed extending the application window for the program through December and allowing certain small businesses to apply for a second loan, provided that they could show they had used all or most of their initial loan and that they had lost substantial revenue.
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said on Tuesday that he preferred using some of the remaining funds in the program to provide a second round of assistance to small businesses.
“Our hope is that we can use that as the sort of foundation for building a second round of assistance in a more targeted way,” he said.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/us/politics/small-business-loans-extended.html
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