The Senate approved a $484 billion emergency bill Tuesday to help more struggling small businesses pay their employees during the coronavirus pandemic, after Democrats who blocked the measure for a week forced the White House into spending more immediately on hospitals and coronavirus testing.
The bipartisan move came as President Trump said roughly 40% of the country is preparing to reopen for business.
“We’re opening up America again — 20 states representing 40% of the U.S. population have announced that they are making plans and preparations to safely restart their economies in the very near future,” the president said. “They’re moving along pretty quickly.”
The president also prepared an order halting new immigration for the next 60 days, partly to protect American jobs, he said.
In two months, Mr. Trump said, “I hope the economy is going to be great by that time.”
And the president again gave a shout-out to protesters who are rallying in state capitals to press their governors to reopen for business.
“People want to get back to work,” the president said. “I’ve watched some of the protests … they’re doing social distancing, if you can believe it. The groups I’ve seen have been very much spread out. People want to get to work, they’ve got to make a living. They have to take care of their family.”
Senators approved the bailout legislation unanimously on a voice vote that avoided the need for most lawmakers to travel to Washington. The House could vote on the package Thursday.
The president, while urging the House to approve the new funding, said he will demand that some larger companies pay back aid from the first installment that he said wasn’t intended for them. Shake Shack, for example, has said it will return $10 million.
“I’m going to request it,” Mr. Trump said, adding that he also will make sure Harvard University, with an endowment of $40 billion, returns nearly $9 million that it received in coronavirus disaster relief.
Up to 1 million small businesses that were shut out in the first round of “paycheck protection” aid of $350 billion are waiting for another chance for the money. Underscoring the urgency, more than 22 million Americans have lost their jobs in the past month as governors ordered all but “essential” businesses to close or curtail operations to slow the spread of the virus.
Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said the first round of small business aid helped about 30 million workers keep their jobs.
The vast majority of the new funds — about $320 billion — will go to replenish the small-business program that dried up Friday because of heavy demand. Of that, $60 billion will be set aside for small business lenders and community banks.
It also includes money for an expanded list of programs that Democrats had pushed for over a week of negotiations: $60 billion for small business loans and grants in economic disaster funds, $75 billion for hospitals, and $25 billion for coronavirus testing.
“Republicans never wanted this crucial program for workers and small businesses to shut down. We tried to pass additional funding a week before it lapsed,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who asserted that the deal came together after Democrats “walked away” from some of their demands.
Still, the package is nearly twice as large as the $250 billion request for the PPP that the administration sought last week.
The only voices of protest came from Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who came to the Senate floor but didn’t stop the bill from passing. Mr. Paul said “no amount of bailout dollars will stimulate an economy that is being strangled by quarantine.”
“Most of this money will not be repaid,” Mr. Paul said on the Senate floor. “It will ultimately be considered grants, it will be added to our national debt. The money desired is not money that we have saved for a rainy day. This money doesn’t exist anywhere. It will be created or borrowed.”
Including this spending bill, the pandemic’s bill for federal taxpayers has risen to more than $2.8 trillion in less than two months.
Even as Congress poured more money into the paycheck protection program, the Small Business Administration said Tuesday that the personal information of more than 7,000 business owners applying for economic injury disaster loans was potentially seen by other applicants on the SBA website on March 25. The loans are for up to $10,000.
The SBA said only the disaster loan program was affected, not the PPP, which did not begin until April 3 and which is handled by a separate system. PPP loans and grants are up to $10 million, for companies with 500 or fewer employees.
A banking industry source said the new $60 billion fund, which is mainly for loans and grants for women and minority-owned businesses, would require the SBA to reprogram its “E-TRAN” electronic processing system to calculate bank size.
“We are concerned changing the program midcourse and forcing SBA to reprogram their processing systems could cause unnecessary delays and confusion for small businesses trying to save millions of jobs,” said Richard Hunt, president and CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association.
Lenders and applicants cited delays and glitches during the first round of aid distribution. There were also complaints that companies with relatively healthy cash reserves obtained grants intended for businesses in danger of closing because of the government’s first-come, first-serve rules.
For example, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, a chain with more than 5,000 employees, received $20 million for two of its outlets. Mr. Mnuchin said certain people in the PPP program “may not have been clear and understanding the certification.”
“If you pay back the loan right away, you won’t have liability to the SBA,” he said. “But there are severe consequences for people who don’t test properly this certification. We want to make sure this money is available to small businesses.”
He said more than 1 million companies that received grants in the first round have fewer than 10 workers.
The president is encouraging governors to reopen their states for business, and several governors are easing restrictions or preparing to do so next week.
But AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Tuesday that workers can’t trust Mr. Trump to lead the country back to work safely, saying employees need more coronavirus testing and massive supplies of protective equipment before returning to their jobs.
“President Trump made this crisis worse,” said Mr. Trumka, head of the nation’s largest labor federation. “Instead of science, he’s chosen politics. Instead of unity, he’s chosen division. And now he wants us to trust him with our lives and our livelihood. The answer is, we can’t. There’s too much at stake.”
In a conference call with reporters, Mr. Trumka outlined labor unions’ demands for safely returning to work, including a massive deployment of personal protective equipment in workplaces and a big increase in “rapid and reliable” testing.
“The greatest mistake we can make is reopening the economy too soon,” he said. “Too many people, including President Trump, are asking ’when.’ That’s the wrong question. We need to be asking how a rush to open without the proper protection for workers will lead to an explosion of the disease, many more deaths, and another shutdown. It’s a surefire way to increase the death count and plunge our economy into a second Great Depression.”
Many states, especially in the South, are preparing to ease restrictions on work and travel this week or next week. The White House has issued guidelines for reopening but said the decision rests with individual governors.
Some major companies with union workers already are returning to work. Boeing, for example, has restarted manufacturing operations with tens of thousands of workers back on assembly lines.
• This article based in part on wires reports.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
• Gabriella Muñoz can be reached at gmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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