Radio Recap – Senate Votes to Replenish Paycheck Protection Program, Aid Hospitals

What’s in the new Coronavirus stimulus bill?

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live we discussed the new COVID-19 stimulus package which was passed by the U.S. Senate yesterday.

The new $484 billion dollar interim emergency bill includes expanding funding for small business loans, which was an issue that needed to be addressed. It also has money for hospitals which is also important, as well as Coronavirus testing.

Now, the House is expected to pass the bill this week.

I asked ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett about the status of the House as it relates to this. He made the following point:

The House is going to come back into session tomorrow at 10am. We don’t have a timing on the vote yet. They are going to actually take a vote, so they need a quorum of their Members present. It is expected to pass.

One of the good things, we talked about how many hundreds of pages the previous bill were. This one is twenty five pages. We were able to go through it quickly last night. It is a pretty straight plus-up of the programs that you mentioned: funding for hospitals, funding for testing, and funding for small business loans – another $310 billion dollars for that paycheck protection program.

The House is supposed to take it up tomorrow and I will just say, as we’ve said so many times before, we’re going to watch. We’re going to make sure that they don’t introduce extraneous matters. I don’t expect them to, but I’ve been surprised before. We’re going to stay on it.

We’ve already begun looking at the legislation to make sure there is, as Thann mentioned, nothing in there that would cause problems.

Jordan Sekulow described the situation further:

What the Senate did was perfect. I think twenty five pages, it just shows you that you don’t have to write eight hundred pages when you are basically re-upping a package you have already voted on before.

The total package is $483.4 billion dollars. That’s $310 billion additional new dollars for the Payment Protection Program. $30 billion set aside for the distribution by financial institutions with less than $10 billion in assets, so the smaller banks. $30 billion is set aside for distribution by financial institutions with $10-$50 billion dollars in assets, so slightly larger banks. Then you’ve also got money in there for the SBA, the Small Business Administration and all the costs related to this.

Now there’s $60 billion dollars in economic injury disaster loans and grants. That’s part of an SBA program that’s been increased. There’s $75 billion dollars additional for hospitals and healthcare facilities. That’s an increase from $100 billion to $175 billion and there’s $25 billion for testing.

Also, for the Payment Protection plan – what is this in total now? It means in total, including this if it passes, it’ll be about $659 billion dollars available for employers to keep their employees on the payroll.

It is important because right now there have been a couple of open up orders in states like Georgia. The restrictions that have been in place will not let these businesses get anywhere near their full status. That’s why these interim measures are necessary.

You can listen to the entire episode, complete with more detailed analysis of what is being called Stimulus 3.5, here.