Keeping Americans on Payrolls

While the COVID-19 pandemic continues its destructive pace, the devastating effects on the economy have come into clearer view. No business, small or large, is immune from the effects of the virus and the measures we are taking to counter it. Fortunately, Congress and President Trump have been hard at work to come up with solutions for keeping businesses and their employees afloat during this pandemic.

One of the main tools for providing businesses relief has been the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), created by the CARES Act to keep workers on payroll at businesses and nonprofits with fewer than 500 employees. PPP has been extremely successful and popular, delivering $3 billion in aid to Nebraska businesses alone. Nebraska banks have been doing their part, working overtime in overdrive processing vital loans for affected businesses. Even during this time of social distancing, there has been a tremendous sense of our community and how willing Nebraskans are to help one another.

Due to the success of PPP, this week the House of Representatives returned to Washington to provide more funds for the program. Phase 3.5, as the package has been called, replenishes PPP while also providing additional funding for hospitals and for testing of the COVID-19 virus. Once again, as he has throughout this crisis, President Trump showed crucial leadership in getting all sides together and passing this package in a timely manner.

In Congress, we know the work is not completed. Now that we have programs such as PPP, it is our job to provide oversight on how they are running. For instance, after the CARES Act was signed into law, it became apparent many small rural hospitals were ineligible to apply for PPP because these hospitals are operated by local governments – despite most receiving little or no direct monetary support from taxpayers – which are excluded from the program. In order to fix this, I wrote to the administration requesting this unintended exclusion be addressed and introduced H.R. 6569, the Rural Health Relief Act, to allow rural county and municipal hospitals to participate in PPP.

Our hospitals have been doing their part by cancelling elective procedures and limiting access to reduce the spread of COVID-19; we cannot afford to have rural hospitals go under, especially during a pandemic. Fortunately, the Trump administration took note and released a document making hospitals receiving less than 50 percent of their funding from state and local governments eligible for the program. This should ensure all small community hospitals in Nebraska are eligible for PPP.

We know the fight is not over, it is still unclear when life will go completely back to "normal." However, we also know the fighting spirit of Americans, and the ability to always look to the future. We will continue looking for ways to shorten the pandemic, lessen its human and economic impact, and build on the strong economy we had before COVID-19.