Tag: U.S. Congress

Pelosi, McConnell decline White House offer of rapid COVID-19 tests

The Hill logoIn a rare bipartisan joint statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) turned down the White House’s offer of rapid COVID-19 testing kits as the Senate returns to the Capitol this week amid concerns about the continuing coronavirus pandemic.

“Congress is grateful for the Administration’s generous offer to deploy rapid COVID-19 testing capabilities to Capitol Hill, but we respectfully decline the offer at this time,” the congressional leaders said. “Our country’s testing capacities are continuing to scale up nationwide and Congress wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly.”

The Senate will reconvene Monday at 5 p.m. on a confirmation vote for Robert Feitel to become inspector general of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Continue reading.

Public companies received $1 billion in stimulus funds meant for small businesses

Washington Post logoNearly 300 public companies have reported receiving loans. Some have returned them.

Publicly traded companies have received more than $1 billion in funds meant for small businesses from the federal government’s economic stimulus package, according to data from securities filings compiled by The Washington Post.

Nearly 300 public companies have reported receiving money from the fund, called the Paycheck Protection Program, according to the data compiled by The Post. Recipients include 43 companies with more than 500 workers, the maximum typically allowed by the program. Several other recipients were prosperous enough to pay executives $2 million or more.

After the first pool of $349 billion ran dry, leaving more than 80 percent of applicants without funding, outrage over the millions of dollars that went to larger firms prompted some companies to return the money. As of Thursday, public companies had reported returning more than $125 million, according to a Post analysis of filings. Continue reading.

Fed Chair to Congress: Do Whatever It Takes to Keep the Economy From Collapse

New York Times logoIt’s a reversal of the usual relationship between elected officials and independent central bankers.

There were many thousands of viewers watching Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s news conference on Wednesday afternoon, between various online feeds and financial news networks. But his most important message was directed at just 536 people.

That would be the 435 members of the House of Representatives, the 100 members of the United States Senate, and the president of the United States.

The Fed has taken expansive efforts to prop up lending markets in the United States, pledging to inject trillions of dollars of support into the markets, including for corporate bonds (big companies), bank lending (midsize companies), mortgage-backed securities (home buyers) and municipal bonds (states and localities). Congress has encouraged this, authorizing billions to the Treasury to be combined with Fed resources. Continue reading.

Five fights for Congress’s fifth coronavirus bill

The Hill logoLawmakers are clashing over a potential fifth coronavirus relief bill, raising early questions about how quickly Congress will be able to reach an agreement on more aid.

Congress has spent nearly $2.8 trillion to counter the health and economic fallout from the rapid spread of the disease. Roughly 26 million people have filed for unemployment in the past five weeks, while more than 965,435 have tested positive and more than 54,856 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Though the previous four bills have passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, congressional leaders are clashing over the timeline and details of the somewhat confusingly named “phase four” legislation, which would actually be the fifth bill to respond to the crisis. Continue reading.

From distraction to disaster: How coronavirus crept up on Washington

Lawmakers have ripped the administration’s bungled handling of the outbreak. But some now wonder if there’s more they could have done when it might have made a difference.

It was just hours before the start of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial when Sen. Tom Cotton started to worry.

The Arkansas Republican had spent Martin Luther King Day weekend poring over news reports from Asia describing a new, highly infectious disease traced to a provincial city of 11 million inside China, hardening his already deeply held disdain for the Chinese Communist Party.

Cotton was struck by the way the Chinese government was putting a positive spin on its handling of the new virus, while taking increasingly drastic steps to try to contain it. “That’s when it really kind of crystalized for me,” he told POLITICO in an interview. “Those two things obviously do not match.” Continue reading.

House passes $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill, with Trump to sign quickly

The Hill logoThe House on Friday passed a historic $2 trillion coronavirus relief package, overcoming eleventh-hour hurdles erected by a GOP lawmaker that sent furious lawmakers across the country racing back to Washington to move the emergency legislation to President Trump‘s desk.

The enormous package, approved by the Senate late Wednesday night, provides hundreds of billions of dollars for the industries, small businesses, unemployed workers and health care providers hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, which has devastated economies around the world.

Trump has said he’ll sign the bill immediately. Continue reading.

Stimulus aims to lend to small business on good-faith pledge

The idea is to help small businesses retain workers while the economy largely shuts down

The stimulus package passed in the Senate on Wednesday and headed for the House includes $349 billion for providing small businesses forgivable loans to bridge the economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus.

Under the bill, the Small Business Administration would provide the loans through its existing 7(a) program in amounts equal to two and a half months of payroll, with a maximum of $10 million. As long as the borrower uses the loan to cover payroll, interest on debt, rent or utilities, the loans would be forgiven. Details of the package are here.

The idea is to help small businesses retain workers while the economy largely shuts down to fight the spread of the COVID-19 disease caused by the coronavirus. That would allow companies to reopen quickly once the contagion countermeasures are lifted, while keeping the employees financially stable. Continue reading.

The $2 trillion relief bill is massive, but it won’t prevent a recession

Washington Post logoA $2.2 trillion relief package for the U.S. economy — the biggest in history — probably won’t be enough.

The Senate just passed a $2.2 trillion relief package for the economy — the biggest in U.S. history — by a unanimous vote. The House is expected to approve it soon, and President Trump is eager to sign it.

The good news is that the majority of the money will go to laid-off workers, small-business owners, hospitals, and state and local governments. The bad news is that it won’t be enough to stop a recession. And it’s an open question whether the nation can avoid an economic depression, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the 1930s.

“By any measure, this is a huge stimulus package. One thing that it cannot stop is the recession that is coming,” said James McCann, senior global economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments. Continue reading.

Billions in stimulus bill would aid hospitals, schools and public transit

$100 billion to be directed to hospitals and other health care providers and suppliers

The massive economic stimulus to combat the coronavirus pandemic includes a $339.9 billion appropriations package that would provide $100 billion to hospitals and other health providers and suppliers while spreading billions more among emergency disaster relief, schools, public transit and other federal agencies, according to bill text released Wednesday.

The $100 billion for hospitals in the bill (S 3548) — almost a third of the package — would provide reimbursement to cover health care expenses and lost revenue due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Another $27 billion is set aside for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, part of the Health and Human Services Department, for research and development of vaccines and therapeutics to fight the virus and other medical needs. The sum includes up to $16 billion to be used to replenish the Strategic National Stockpile with medical supplies including drugs and protective equipment. Continue reading.

How the business loan program would work in the $2T coronavirus package

The Hill logoThe final version of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill devotes hundreds of billions of dollars in support of loans to companies that are intended to keep them from failing and laying off workers.

The bill includes a variety of mechanisms for businesses of different sizes. Among the most important is a $367 billion program aimed at keeping the country’s unemployment rate from skyrocketing.

“We have never done anything like this before,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), a conservative who would not normally be expected to back a $2 trillion spending bill. “The idea is to encourage these companies to keep workers on the payroll.” Continue reading.