Category: US House

Phillips Conducts Oversight of SBA Pandemic Grant Programs

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WASHINGTON, DC — Today, the House Small Business Committee Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Regulations, led by Chairman Dean Phillips (D-MN), held a hearing focused on assessing the implementation and effectiveness of the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) pandemic related grant programs. The hearing gathered small business owners and stakeholders to testify on their experience obtaining relief and their recommendations for improving the programs.

“Recognizing the need for alternative relief options, Congress and this Committee have worked to provide direct economic relief to small firms that can’t afford to weigh down their balance sheets with more debt,” said Chairman Phillips. “I hope that by taking a closer look at these programs, we can gain a better understanding of the challenges that federal grant programs face, as well as the important relief that these programs are providing to struggling small businesses across the country.”

Since the COVID crisis began devastating small businesses, Congress has worked to provide small firms that couldn’t afford to take on more debt with direct economic relief through grants. The hearing focused on two SBA grant programs implemented in 2021 to reach the most impacted sectors of the economy, the Shuttered Venue Operator Grant (SVOG) program and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF). Over the course of the year these programs will deliver nearly $50 billion to struggling small businesses across the country.

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CBN host gives a tortured defense of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Holocaust remarks

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Christian Broadcasting Network commentator David Brody, appearing on the far right streaming website Real America’s Voice Monday tried to defend Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s remarks made on his show Thursday by falsely claiming the embattled Georgia Republican Congresswoman was referring to “pre-Holocaust” Germany when she talked about Jews being “taken into gas chambers.”

Rep. Greene was comparing Speaker Pelosi’s policies on masks with Hitler’s genocide of millions of Jews and other minorities.

Her remarks sparked massive outrage, intensifying calls for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to remove her from Congress. McCarthy hasn’t bothered to even acknowledge Greene’s antisemitic remarks. Continue reading.

50 years later, the culture wars debate over the child care crisis has barely budged

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Conservative counterproposals to Biden’s families plan look to promote the traditional family at a time when marriages and birthrates are at record lows.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have laid the groundwork for a national child care system, saying it would have placed the government on “the side of communal approaches to child rearing [and] against the family-centered approach.”

Fifty years later, as President Joe Biden makes subsidized child care for low- and middle-income families a major plank of his legislative agenda, the socially conservative argument against his plan sounds much the same as the one Nixon aide Pat Buchanan was making when he wrote that veto message.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., argued that Biden’s prescription would “incentivize women to rely on the federal government to organize their lives” in an interview with the Fox Business Network soon after Biden announced his plan last month. In a tweet, she compared the proposal to Soviet-style child care. Continue reading.

National Guard’s Capitol security mission ends as lawmakers feud over protection needs, costs

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National Guard personnel will fully depart the U.S. Capitol grounds this week, military and congressional officials said Monday, bringing an end to the security mission that began when armed troops were dispatched to help quell the attack by supporters of former president Donald Trump.

The National Guard was deployed Jan. 6 to help beat back a crowd of about 10,000 rioters who had besieged the building and clear out the approximately 800 who had broken inside. Why it took the National Guard more than three hours after the breach to arrive continues to be a matter of contentious discussion on Capitol Hill, where House lawmakers recently grilled Trump’s former acting defense secretary for details about that day.

“These airmen and soldiers protected not only the grounds, but the lawmakers working on those grounds, ensuring the people’s business could continue unabated,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement. “They lived out in very tangible ways the oath they took to support and defend the Constitution.” Continue reading.

Disabled veteran says GOP tricked him into running as a spoiler candidate to defeat Democratic congressman: report

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A blind veteran who ran for Congress in Minnesota last year under the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party now alleges he was tricked into running by a Republican Party operative to siphon votes from then-Democratic-Farmer-Labor Congressman Collin Peterson in Minnesota’s 7th Congressional District, according to local news outlet KMSP.

Kevin Ne Se Shores, said the report, “was surprised by the unsolicited call he got in June of 2020 from a man who encouraged him to run against Congressman Collin Peterson (D-MN) as a candidate for the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party. Shores, who suffers from Gulf War Illness, used cannabis to get off pain killers. He told the FOX 9 Investigators he assumed he was being recruited by a member of the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party. ‘I was under the impression he was a part of that political party,’ Shores said. ‘That was my assumption.’ He was wrong.”

“Unknown to Shores, the man who called encouraging him to run was a Republican strategist, Kip Christianson, who at the time was on the payroll of the Republican National Committee, according to the Federal Election Commission,” said the report. Shores also alleges that Christianson paid his $300 candidate filing fee, telling him, “Don’t worry about it.” Continue reading.

Reps. Phillips, Van Duyne Introduce Bipartisan Restaurant Recovery Fairness Act

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WASHINGTON, DC – Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) has helped introduce a bipartisan bill, the Restaurant Recovery Fairness Act, co-led by his Republican counterpart on the Small Business Committee’s Oversight, Investigations, and Regulations Subcommittee ranking member Beth Van Duyne (R-TX).

The Restaurant Recovery Fairness Act will add a vital oversight component to the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund. American restaurants have submitted requests for over $69 billion in funding, making this oversight crucial to ensure that only proper recipients receive funds.

This morning at a Small Business Committee hearing, Rep. Phillips questioned Isabella Casillas Guzman, the new administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, on the viability and oversight of the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, the Paycheck Protection Program, and other aid programs related to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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MSNBC’s Morning Joe notices something ‘strange’ about the GOP ‘personality cult’

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MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough noticed something “strange” about the “personality cult” that has developed around former president Donald Trump in the Republican Party.

The GOP has lost control of the House, Senate and White House since Trump was first elected, but the “Morning Joe” host said the more they lose, the more they seem to love the twice-impeached one-term president.

“It really is strange,” Scarborough said. “The more Republicans lose, the more of a personality cult Donald Trump seems to develop. You can look at his losses in ’17 and ’18 — historic losses. I mean, Republicans losing like they’ve never lost before in the House of Representatives, just as far as a pure, pure vote totals, [and in] ’19, they started losing governorships in the South and then in ’20, they lost the big race, lost the race for their presidency, lost Georgia, lost the Senate, lost the House.” Continue reading.

Democrats seize on GOP opposition to Jan. 6 commission

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Democrats are hammering Republicans over their opposition to a Jan. 6 commission as they look to retain control of Congress next year.

Hopes for a bipartisan panel to investigate the deadly riot at the Capitol earlier this year were dashed when Republican leadership came out against the idea, casting it as a partisan maneuver.

But some Democrats believe there may be a silver lining in the recent development, seeing the GOP’s sharp reversal on the issue as a way to bolster support ahead of the midterm elections. Continue reading.

Marjorie Taylor Greene attacks fellow Republicans in unhinged rant about ‘pedophile rings in DC’

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The woman derided as the “QAnon congresswoman” blasted the Republican Party while in Arizona to support the GOP’s harshly criticized audit of the 2020 vote.

What kind of corruption are you seeing?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was asked.

“Well, I just see that they’re not doing what say they’re going to do. That’s what I was saying in there was, you know, Republicans always talk about funding and building a wall, ending abortion. Um, they say all these things, but they’re got to follow through on them,” Greene charged. “It’s one thing to say them, but we have to do them.” Continue reading.

‘Why do they tolerate Trump?’ Conservative calls on Republicans to recover some ‘dignity’ and cut ex-president loose

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Donald Trump personally insults the Republicans whose support he demands, and one conservative wonders why they keep sucking up to the twice-impeached former president.

The former reality TV star and 2024 frontrunner has infamously insulted John McCain’s military service, Ted Cruz’s wife and father and Jeb Bush’s vitality, but Republicans keep resisting any chance to cut the scandal-plagued party figurehead loose, wrote The Daily Beast’s Matt Lewis.

“The big question is: Why do they tolerate Trump?” Lewis wondered. “Why doesn’t their primal desire for pride and honor and dignity ever kick in?” Continue reading.