[Senate Hearing 116-519]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                      S. Hrg. 116-519

                       SMALL BUSINESS IN CRISIS:
                  THE 2020 PAYCHECK PROTECTION PROGRAM
                             AND ITS FUTURE

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
                          AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

                                 of the

                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                           DECEMBER 10, 2020

                               __________

    Printed for the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
    

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        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
        
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
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            COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                              ----------  
                              
                     MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Chairman
              BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland, Ranking Member
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho                MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
RAND PAUL, Kentucky                  JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
TIM SCOTT, South Carolina            EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
JONI ERNST, Iowa                     CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma            CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
TODD YOUNG, Indiana                  MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana              TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
MITT ROMNEY, Utah                    JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
                Meredith West, Republican Staff Director
                 Sean Moore, Democratic Staff Director
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                           Opening Statements

                                                                   Page

Rubio, Hon. Marco, Chairman, a U.S. Senator from Florida.........     1
Cardin, Hon. Benjamin L., Ranking Member, a U.S. Senator from 
  Maryland.......................................................     4

                               Witnesses

Holtz-Eakin, Mr. Douglas, President, American Action Forum, 
  Washington, DC.................................................     7
McFarland, Ms. Iman, Chief Operating Officer/Co-Owner, 21st 
  Century Expo Group, Inc., Capital Heights, MD..................    19
Williams, Ms. Dafina, Senior Vice President, Public Policy, 
  Opportunity Finance Network, Washington, DC....................    24
Zernick, Mr. Thomas G., President of SBA Lending, First Home 
  Bank, St. Petersburg, FL.......................................    34

          Alphabetical Listing and Appendix Material Submitted

Cardin, Hon. Benjamin L.
    Opening statement............................................     4
Community Gyms Coalition
    Prepared statement...........................................    72
Holtz-Eakin, Mr. Douglas
    Testimony....................................................     7
    Prepared statement...........................................    10
McFarland, Ms. Iman
    Testimony....................................................    19
    Prepared statement...........................................    21
Rubio, Hon. Marco
    Opening statement............................................     1
Small Business Investor Alliance
    Letter dated December 8, 2020................................    75
Wall Street Journal-Faulkender, Michael and Miran, Stephen
    Prepared statement...........................................    77
Williams, Ms. Dafina
    Testimony....................................................    24
    Prepared statement...........................................    26
Zernick, Mr. Thomas G.
    Testimony....................................................    34
    Prepared statement...........................................    36

 
                       SMALL BUSINESS IN CRISIS:
                  THE 2020 PAYCHECK PROTECTION PROGRAM.
                             AND ITS FUTURE

                              ----------                              


                      THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2020

                      United States Senate,
                        Committee on Small Business
                                      and Entrepreneurship,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., via 
videoconference and in Room 301, Russell Senate Office 
Building, Hon. Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Committee, 
presiding.
    Present: Senators Rubio, Risch, Scott, Ernst, Inhofe, 
Young, Kennedy, Romney, Hawley, Cardin, Cantwell, Shaheen, 
Booker, Coons, Hirono, and Rosen.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO, CHAIRMAN, A U.S. SENATOR 
                          FROM FLORIDA

    Chairman Rubio. The hearing will come to order, and today's 
hearing will be focused on the Paycheck Protection Program. I 
would like to thank everyone that is joining us, both in person 
and virtually. I want to welcome our witnesses before the 
Committee. I believe we have two virtually and two here in 
person.
    This pandemic, of course, has affected virtually every part 
of our lives--our health, our education, our jobs, our 
communities, our families, our economy, even the way we conduct 
business here.
    To explain, I generally do not speak with a mask on. We 
have a lot of young people and others here who work in our 
process who, at this time of year, go home to see their 
families on the holidays. I would hate for anyone to be unable 
to do so because somebody tells them they sat too close to me 
for too long a period of time, and as a result they have to 
stay here over the holidays. So in an abundance of that 
caution, if anybody has any problems hearing me they will let 
me know and we will figure out how to work through that.
    The pandemic, the nationwide lockdowns, were then, and they 
remain now, a big crisis for America's small businesses. In 
March, as the pandemic and the lockdowns began, crushing small 
business, the Senate and bipartisan members of this Committee 
responded by coming together and enacting what I think is, 
without a doubt, historical support for small businesses.
    One of those lifelines was a program that was entirely new, 
and it did not exist, it had never existed before, and it was 
put together in a very short period of time. It was built upon 
the network of community banks that the SBA has worked with for 
many years, to deliver needed capital to small businesses, and 
that support was what is now known as the Paycheck Protection 
Program.
    And in this crisis we called upon every inch of America's 
financial infrastructure to help deliver that help that it 
brought to small businesses. And I think it is fair to say that 
it was not a perfect program, because no government program is 
possibly perfect, not to mention one put together in six, seven 
days and implemented over a short period of time. But I do 
think, without a doubt, it is clear that the Paycheck 
Protection Program has been the single most effective part of 
the CARES Act that was passed, and one of the most effective 
Federal relief programs in modern history, delivering more than 
$525 billion to small businesses and nonprofits all across the 
United States.
    It had two goals. The first goal was to help workers keep 
their jobs, to provide funds so that employers did not have to 
lay people off, keep workers attached to employment, and 
second, and related to the first, was helping small businesses 
to be able to stay open, not have to permanently close their 
doors.
    Under the crisis conditions in which we created the 
program, to achieve these goals required setting a third goal--
to deliver the support the PPP would provide, and do so as 
quickly as possible before those small businesses ran out of 
time and money.
    As we look back, I believe it is more than fair to say that 
the program accomplished all three of those goals. The goal of 
worker retention, small businesses receiving PPP report saving 
up to 55 million jobs. In May 2020, the first jobs reports 
after the full amount of PPP loans had been disbursed showed 
the biggest month for jobs gained on record since 1939, and 
beat economists' expectations by over 10 million jobs.
    As to the goal of helping small businesses, more than 5.2 
million small businesses and nonprofits received PPP loans. By 
the end of May, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that more than 
70 percent of all small businesses in the entire country--70 
percent--received PPP loans.
    As to the goal of delivering assistance as quickly as 
possible, the SBA approved nearly $350 billion in PPP loans in 
just two weeks. And this is by far, and by any measure, the 
fastest delivery of funds, at this scale, for a fiscal policy 
program, in modern history.
    This program was a tremendous success in meeting the goals 
that we created it to meet, and now I believe, personally, it 
is time, in a more tailored and surgical way, to do it again. 
The work that the first round of PPP began, though successful, 
it is still incomplete. The pandemic is still raging, lockdowns 
are again being contemplated, placed on small businesses and/or 
restrictions continue to be in place, allowing restrictions on 
their ability to operate, consumer activity in certain sectors 
is falling. And so by enacting a second round of tailored PPP 
assistance we can help build upon the success of the first 
round, fix some of the problems that were identified to that 
first round, and protect small businesses through the winter as 
we walk that bridge toward what we hope will be a widely-
distributed vaccine that gets us to a point where we are no 
longer dealing with many of these restrictions.
    As we consider that second round, this hearing provides a 
good opportunity to look at and take stock of what we learned 
in the first round. The priority of speed that we gave the 
program, however necessary, it did create some initial problems 
in implementation. For example, the average loan size approved 
at the beginning of the program was larger, and the number of 
companies that had access to capital elsewhere received PPP 
loans. That problem was resolved, yet the program's critics 
persist in saying that the program was skewed toward larger 
businesses.
    The fact is 70 percent of PPP loans, 70 percent of the 
actual individual loans, went to small businesses that had 10 
or less workers. The average business receiving a PPP loan at 
the end of the program had 13 workers, and 80 percent of all 
funds went to businesses with fewer than 200 employees, even 
though all businesses with 500 or fewer were eligible.
    Another example is related to fraud. We have learned a good 
deal about the need for inspection and oversight by the 
administering agencies. However, the evidence so far does not 
suggest a fraud rate in PPP that is higher than that of any of 
the other programs in the CARES Act, and the evidence suggests, 
actually, that PPP suffers from a lower risk of fraud, much 
lower risk than the EIDL program, which is an existing program. 
And one of the reasons for this success has been the fact that 
the banks and credit unions delivering PPP are still subject to 
Federal antifraud regulation, and this public-private 
partnership, in combination with increased SBA and Treasury 
oversight, allowed us to strike an important balance of 
ensuring fraud protection while also distributing program funds 
in a timely manner.
    Another example is with respect to the equitable 
distribution of funds to small businesses owned by people of 
all backgrounds, all races, and ethnicities. As we explored in 
a hearing this past July, we have learned the importance of 
community financial institutions, like CDFIs and the technical 
assistance grants through agencies like the Minority Business 
Development Agency. Though certainly a disparity at the 
program's beginning, the heroic work of community financial 
institutions such as these helped to overcome much of that.
    There was a survey completed by Goldman Sachs that found 
that by the conclusion of the program, 93 percent of Black-
owned small businesses applied for a PPP loan, and of those who 
applied, 95 percent received a PPP loan. According to the SBA's 
demographics survey data, minority-owned small businesses 
received a higher percentage of PPP loans than their relative 
share of business ownership in the U.S. Black- and Hispanic-
owned small businesses account for 7.8 percent of total small 
businesses. So 7.8 percent of the small businesses in the 
country are owned by African American or Hispanic, and yet they 
successfully received 10.6 percent of the total PPP loans 
disbursed.
    So despite some negative narratives that I have seen, I 
have heard loud and clear about the success of PPP from small 
business owners throughout the country. For instance, Between 
Pixels, in Marietta, Georgia, said, ``We applied for and 
received the PPP loan, which helped us focus our energy on 
pivoting our business model. The funds allowed us to reassign 
staff to these opportunities rather than cut positions, which 
ended up making up for the revenue we lost from our traditional 
services,'' end quote.
    Mike Zaffaroni, the owner of Liberty Landscape in 
Jacksonville, Florida, said, ``If I had to sum up the PPP loan 
in one word for us, it gave us confidence. We would be in a 
much different position without it.'' That is the end of his 
quote.
    So these represent only a small portion of the comments we 
have received from small businesses about the program. As I 
said at the outset, while there are certainly better days ahead 
with the promises of successful vaccines--we should have great 
confidence that certainly before this time next year we will 
all be living a very different situation--we do have an 
immediate need over the next few months that requires action. 
Small businesses need more help to make it through this winter. 
Given a potential second wave looming and impending government 
lockdowns in different jurisdictions, it is vitally important.
    I think perhaps the biggest evidence of all how this 
program has worked is that in a time in which it is difficult 
for the parties, and even within the parties to agree on many 
things, Congress has voted unanimously, on three separate 
occasions, to fund and enhance PPP, and I believe it is far 
past time for us to come together and do it once again. It had 
been my hope we would have done it months ago, but I hope we 
will do it now. I cannot imagine not doing it, what its 
implications would be.
    So as I said, today's hearing will provide us an 
opportunity to evaluate the first round, to discuss the future 
of the program, with all these goals in mind, and I look 
forward to hearing from today's expert panel on their 
experiences with PPP.
    And now I am going to recognize the Ranking Member, Senator 
Cardin, who will deliver his opening statement.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, RANKING MEMBER, A 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM MARYLAND

    Senator Cardin. Senator Rubio, first thank you, and in the 
interest of safety I am doing this remotely so that we can have 
fewer people in the committee room.
    This is likely to be Senator Rubio's last hearing chairing 
the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. He is moving 
on to, as I understand, different responsibilities in the next 
Congress. And I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate 
you on an incredible record during these two years that I have 
had the honor to sit next to you as the Ranking Democratic 
Member.
    You have really put the Small Business and Entrepreneurship 
Committee on the map in the United States Senate during this 
pandemic. Under your leadership, we have really responded to 
the needs of small businesses, and we recognize that small 
businesses are the growth engine of this country. It is where 
jobs are created and innovation takes place, and they are not 
as resilient in dealing with economic downturns. And it was 
absolutely essential that we respond in a very major way during 
this pandemic, and under your leadership we were able to do 
that.
    So I want to congratulate you on just a great record, and I 
look forward to working on this Committee on other issues, and 
I know you will be remaining on this Committee, as we look at 
how we can do things moving forward to ensure the success of 
small businesses.
    The programs that you referred to that we were able to 
develop, particularly the Paycheck Protection Program, was one 
that involved the work of all the members of Committee, and I 
just really wanted to acknowledge that this has been really a 
bipartisan group effort to develop ways that we could provide 
comprehensive help to small businesses during this pandemic. 
Every member needs to be praised. I particularly want to 
acknowledge the former Ranking Member on our side, Senator 
Shaheen, for the work that she did as we were crafting the 
different programs in the CARES Act.
    You have mentioned the Paycheck Protection Program was 
stood up very quickly. I agree with you. I think the Paycheck 
Protection Program, the enhancements in the EIDL program, 
including grants, the loan forgiveness program, and the fact 
that we not only passed it but we also acted two other times to 
replenish and extend the Paycheck Protection Program. We did it 
when we replenished, we directed that funds be targeted to 
underserved communities. When we look at what we did, it was 
very successful and I agree with you. I want to underscore that 
this was a program stood up nearly overnight, to get money out 
quickly to small businesses to keep them alive, and it 
accomplished its intended purpose.
    More needs to be done. We passed the CARES Act that 
included these programs in mid-March, and when we passed those 
in mid-March we really thought that this pandemic would be 
behind us by this past summer, but that was not the case. So I 
agree with Senator Rubio that we need to act, we should have 
acted before now, in extending relief to small businesses. It 
is desperately needed.
    As we are holding this hearing, the United States is 
recording 200,000 new virus cases a day, six times higher than 
we saw last spring, three times higher than we saw this past 
summer. In the past we have regional breakouts that caused 
concern. We now have a nationwide breakout of the virus in 
every part of our country. New restrictions are being imposed, 
and those businesses that depend upon larger gatherings are 
very much compromised as this pandemic continues. Food 
services, hospitality, entertainment, travel, tourism--the list 
goes on and on.
    We need to respond, but we need to target the next round of 
relief for several reasons. Let us remember what we learned 
from the CARES Act. We learned that our experience is that we 
put into the CARES Act a provision to require the Small 
Business Administration to issue guidelines for underserved and 
underbanked borrowers. They did not do that. We need to be more 
prescriptive, as we did when we replenished the funds to 
allocate to CDFIs, microlenders, and other mission lenders.
    We need to be more specific as to how we allocate these 
funds for several reasons. I believe we need to concentrate on 
smaller of the small businesses. Senator Rubio, I appreciate 
the numbers that you were able to present today. You and I know 
we have had one difficult time getting information out of the 
SBA as to how this program has worked. Their transparency has 
been terrible, and it is something that needs to be corrected. 
We need to have accountability and we need to understand the 
program as we move forward, and we have been very much 
handicapped because we have not been able to get that type of 
information.
    But one thing is clear as we go into a second round, and 
you and I understand this. We are going to have limited 
resources. We are not going to have as much as we would like to 
have. We are going to be dealing with a bridge aid package, if 
we can get it done, that will hold us all for several months. 
We need, therefore, to recognize we cannot do everything we 
want to do, and the hardest-hit small businesses are the 
smaller small businesses. So let us target the program to the 
smaller of the small businesses. Let's make sure it is based 
upon need so that we get to the small businesses that really 
need help, those that have been dependent upon large gatherings 
that cannot have those gatherings in their business.
    And let us reach out to the underserved community, because 
what we learned in the CARES Act, that those who did not have 
priority-established relationships with lenders were not first 
in line. In some cases they were not able to get into the line 
at all. So we have to recognize that we have to reach out and 
do more to make sure the help gets to the underserved 
community.
    And let us also recognize that for many small businesses 
another loan is problematic. They need grants. Grants are very 
important. That is why, as we look at the next round, let us 
concentrate on how we can fine-tune the EIDL advance program, 
which are direct grants by the Federal Government without going 
to lenders, how we can refine that grant program to meet the 
needs of the underserved and underbanked community.
    We have already seen this model in action in my hometown of 
Baltimore, where the Baltimore Development Corporation has 
provided support to small businesses based on need and other 
factors, not on first-come, first-served basis. It is vital 
that we learn from the best practices of local organizations 
like the Baltimore Development Corporation, as well as directly 
from small business owners, because they have the best 
understanding of what is working and what is not working.
    Mr. Chairman, we also need to make sure that we maintain 
the bipartisan support that was the hallmark of passing the 
original programs to help small business, as we get into the 
next round. We need to make sure that we include the Democrats, 
Republicans, House, Senate. Let's get this done.
    I want to thank our witnesses for providing their testimony 
this morning. I am especially looking forward to hearing from 
Maryland small business owner, Iman McFarland, who will share 
with us the impact COVID-19 has had on her event space, and 
tell us how she was able to use the resources provided by the 
CARES Act to pivot her business.
    My hope is that we will leave this hearing with a better 
understanding of how best to improve not only PPP but all the 
programs that small businesses need to make it through the 
pandemic, including EIDL, Small Business Debt Relief Program, 
and future grant programs for small businesses unable to take 
on additional debt.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. Thank you.
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you, Senator Cardin, and, by the way, 
I can just say none of this would have been possible without a 
partner like Senator Cardin, and everybody on the Committee and 
so many others. And, a particular thanks to Senator Shaheen and 
Collins who are not members of the Committee but were 
intricately involved in the design of this program as well. It 
was a very rewarding process to be a part of that and I want to 
thank all of them for all the work they put into it. They were 
phenomenal.
    Our witnesses today, we have two here with us, Ms. Iman 
McFarland, who is the Chief Operating Officer and second-
generation co-owner of the 21st Century Expo Group, the 
Nation's only woman- and minority-owned general service 
contractor in the events industry, and serving clients for more 
than 28 years.
    And Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who is the President of the 
American Action Forum. He was the Chief Economist of the 
President's Council of Economic Advisors from 2001 to 2002. He 
was the Director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 
to 2005.
    Joining us remotely is Ms. Dafina Williams, the Senior Vice 
President of Public Policy at the Opportunity Finance Network, 
the National Association of Community Development and Financial 
Institutions, and Thomas Zernick is the President of 
CreditBench, the SBA lending division at First Home Bank in St. 
Petersburg, Florida.
    I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here with us 
today, and I think we will just begin with the witnesses here. 
Mr. Holtz-Eakin, we will start with you, and then we will 
continue with Ms. McFarland, and then go to our witnesses that 
are remote.
    But thank you all for being a part of this important 
hearing. It is very timely, not just to look back at the 
previous round of assistance but as we are contemplating new 
assistance how we can learn from the problems in the first 
round and make it better. So thank you all for being here.

 STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ACTION 
                     FORUM, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. Holtz-Eakin. Chairman Rubio, Ranking Member Cardin, and 
members of the Committee, thank you for the privilege of being 
here today. Let me make a few brief point and then I look 
forward to answering your questions.
    In thinking about evaluating the Paycheck Protection 
Program, PPP, it is important to remember the economic 
conditions into which it was introduced. When the coronavirus 
pandemic became apparent in mid-March, American households 
experienced an enormously sharp pullback in spending as they 
stopped consuming services that involved personal contact. So 
people did not go to restaurants, people did not get on 
airplanes, they did not go to hotels, and in large swaths of 
American business customers simply disappeared and there was an 
enormous cash flow crunch in the U.S. economy.
    In the face of that kind of a cash flow crunch, what can 
you do? Well, businesses, first of all, sold everything they 
could in order to raise cash, and we saw massive selloffs in 
financial markets, which required the Federal Reserve to step 
in and stabilize, which they did quite effectively. But in 
those circumstances it is also tempting to simply lay everybody 
off, and there was a need for intervention to stop those 
layoffs, preserve employer-employee relationships, preserve the 
infrastructure of the American economy through the pandemic as 
it bridged to the other side, and in those circumstances, also 
provide the paycheck for American households to continue to 
live in the face of such an enormous downdraft.
    It is hard sometimes to imagine just how bad those 
conditions were. It turns out that in the second quarter of 
2020, the U.S. economy contracted by 9 percent. In the worst 
full year of the Great Depression, 1932, the U.S. economy 
contracted by 12 percent. So we experienced something very 
close to that in the second quarter of 2020.
    In those circumstances, what the PPP did was simply 
fantastic. It is--and I agree with the Chairman's assessment--
the single most effective fiscal policy ever undertaken by the 
United States Government. It got over $500 billion out the door 
and into small businesses in about four weeks. It preserved 
employee relationships with their employers, thus preventing a 
lot of economic scarring that would take a long time to recover 
from. And it provided that $500 billion in liquidity, in cash 
flow, to the workers and their employers in order to get 
through the 22 months that the program was designed to cover.
    Its enormous success really stands out in contrast to, for 
example, the Main Street Lending program, which was intended to 
help larger employers, and which effectively provided no 
support whatsoever. And so in thinking about the PPP, I think 
it is important to recognize that speed was of the essence, and 
speed was in the program, the scale of the response had to be 
enormous because the scale of the downturn was enormous, and, 
you know, it had to really put a premium on speed and scale, 
and it did that very, very well.
    The Census Pulse data is really quite striking, that 
reports that three-quarters of American small businesses 
received a PPP loan. I think the success is just enormous.
    We now find ourselves in a similar situation, where we need 
a bridge to the other side of another surge in the coronavirus 
pandemic, and another round of PPP, I think, is entirely 
merited. And the good news is there is a lot of experience from 
the first round, that would actually be brought to bear on a 
second program, and it can be designed with a little more 
targeted approach, because we are not experiencing the same 
kind of broad cash flow crunch that we saw earlier in the year.
    So in going forward, it would make sense to, first of all, 
address those issues with the lenders. I think it is important 
that lenders be given strict limits on their liability so that 
they are held harmless from any misrepresentation by borrowers. 
That was close but not quite done the first time around. I 
think that would be a big improvement.
    There is no need to cover publicly-traded companies. They 
have access to capital markets. Capital markets are functioning 
adequately, and so it can be targeted more carefully.
    I do not think it is a failure of the PPP to have gotten 
loans out to the larger employers. The whole point was to 
preserve employees' paychecks. Large employers have more 
employees. That was a success in that moment. But going forward 
it could be targeted to smaller firms, under 300 employees and 
the like. And, you know, I think having both less lender 
liability and a broad array of lenders will ensure that the 
funds are distributed more broadly in the U.S. economy, and 
that would be a success going forward.
    So I thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I am 
quite encouraged by what was done last spring. I think it is 
possible to do the same kind of good again in this moment, and 
I look forward to answering your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Holtz-Eakin follows:]
    
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you very much. Ms. McFarland?

STATEMENT OF IMAN McFARLAND, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER/CO-OWNER, 
       21ST CENTURY EXPO GROUP, INC., CAPITOL HEIGHTS, MD

    Ms. McFarland. Thank you, Chairman. Chairman Rubio, Ranking 
Member Cardin, and distinguished members of the Committee, 
thank you for the opportunity to testify before you this 
morning. My name is Iman McFarland and I am the Chief Operating 
Officer of 21st Century Expo Group, located in Prince George's 
County, Maryland. I am here today not only representing myself 
but also my business partners, who happen to be my mom and dad, 
who are here with me today, but also my employees, my community 
of Prince George's County, and other small business owners 
around the country.
    My parents started our family business, 21st Century Expo 
Group, 30 years ago, in their basement, when I was only 4-
years-old. Today we are the only Black- and women-owned trade 
show management firm in the entire country.
    We began 2020 with 10 employees and plans to expand, but as 
we lost the ability to generate event revenue in February, and 
all of our contracts were canceled, we were unfortunately 
forced to furlough those employees. Over the last 30 years, 
21st Century has weathered the impacts of both the 9/11 
terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis, but 2020 was 
the first year in our entire history that we had to close our 
doors completely and lay off staff.
    Thankfully for our business, and five million others around 
the country, the Federal Government acted quickly to pass the 
CARES Act in March, and stood up the Paycheck Protection 
Program, and it also expanded the use cases of the Economic 
Injury Disaster Loan. At 21st Century Expo Group we were 
fortunate, fortunate to have a strong relationship with our 
bank, fortunate to have up-to-date financial records, and 
fortunate to quickly receive both PPP and EIDL funds, funds 
that allowed us to stay afloat during the first half of this 
year, when our revenue declined by a staggering 85 percent.
    PPP funds went toward bringing back five employees, rent on 
our warehouse, and providing health benefits for employees, 
while our EIDL funds went toward expenses like overhead costs, 
vendor payments, and our internet bills.
    The bill's funds only lasted until October, and we knew we 
had to explore new opportunities. So we did what any 
entrepreneur does. We took stock of the assets we had and the 
needs we could meet and looked to chart a new path forward. My 
mom and I looked around Prince George's County and saw kids, 
schools, teams, and trainers who were facing unprecedented 
challenges and hardships, and then we looked at our 40,000-
square-foot warehouse and saw an opportunity to give back while 
giving our business new life.
    Thanks in part to our EIDL funds, we transitioned our 
warehouse into an academic and athletic training center. Not 
only are we helping the kids of PG County, we are providing 
coaches and tutors a much-needed place to generate income for 
themselves. We have been able to hire new administrative staff, 
bring back warehouse managers, and employ other small 
businesses to help clean and manage our warehouse.
    The government funds we received not only ensured our trade 
show company will continue and to be here when our industry 
returns but it will also help us create a second enterprise 
that provides employment in our community and needed services.
    But we are not in the clear. We have gone to great lengths 
to keep our business solvent. We have laid off our staff, we 
have cut employee benefits, foregone paying ourselves, and 
dipped into personal savings to cover business expenses.
    And we are obviously not alone. I am a proud member of 
Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Business Voices Program, and a 
November survey of this community showed that 42 percent have 
been forced to lay off employees or cut employee compensation; 
52 percent have foregone paying themselves; 33 percent have 
dipped into their own personal savings, and these statistics 
are even more bleak for businesses with Black owners.
    I am one small business and one voice, but I speak to the 
challenges faced by many. Millions of small people throughout 
the country need more help to survive. They need your help to 
survive. If I could ask for three things. First, we need 
additional PPP and EIDL funds. Second, we need to ensure that 
PPP loans do not have negative tax implications for small 
business owners. And third, commercial rent deferrals and other 
rent assistance would be invaluable for event businesses like 
mine, where facility rental alone is a major overhead cost.
    I recognize that the response to this pandemic must first 
be, first and foremost, about protecting lives, but it must 
also focus on protecting livelihoods, including those of our 
Nation's most vital small businesses. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. McFarland follows:]
    
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    Chairman Rubio. Thank you so much. Ms. Williams.

  STATEMENT OF DAFINA WILLIAMS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, PUBLIC 
      POLICY, OPPORTUNITY FINANCE NETWORK, WASHINGTON, DC

    Ms. Williams. Good morning, Chairman Rubio, Ranking Member 
Cardin, and members of the Committee. I am pleased to testify 
today about why community development financial institutions, 
CDFIs, must be central to the Federal Government's strategy for 
reaching very small and minority-owned businesses. These 
businesses cannot afford for CDFIs to be an afterthought and 
public policies addressing the economic crisis brought on by 
COVID-19.
    The Paycheck Protection Program experience demonstrated 
that when CDFIs are empowered with supportive policies and 
adequate capital, they outperform other lenders. PPP has been a 
critical lifeline to save businesses and jobs. Opportunity 
Finance Network supports an extension of this program.
    Through the initial iteration of PPP, business owners, 
lenders, and policymakers also learned some lessons. Who your 
lender is matters. There are gaps in our financial system that 
lock people out. Too many of our minority- owned, women-owned, 
and rural businesses are unbanked and underbanked. If we want 
Federal relief to reach these small businesses, we must reach 
the lenders who understand and are working in these markets, 
CDFIs. As specialized lenders that focus on underbanked 
communities, CDFIs are uniquely poised to deliver Federal 
relief to underestimated businesses. We reach communities that 
other lenders do not. Our borrowers are 85 percent low income, 
58 percent people of color, 48 percent women, and 26 percent 
rural.
    Thankfully, there has been bipartisan recognition that 
leaving CDFIs out of PPP meant many CDFI customers were left 
out too. OFN has greatly appreciated ongoing efforts from this 
Committee, Congress, SBA, and Treasury to modify the program as 
challenges arise, and these changes, including the $30 billion 
carveout for community financial institutions in Round 2, and 
the $10 billion CDFI set-aside, plus dedicated access to SBA's 
platform for small lenders were effective.
    CDFIs made more than 114,000 PPP loans, totaling more than 
$7.5 billion. Our average loan size was about $65,000. For 
example, Latino Economic Development Center participated in the 
second round of PPP and deployed 109 loans totaling more than 
$2.2 million to businesses in D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and 
Puerto Rico. Their average loan size was about $20,000.
    Orlando, Florida-based BBIF made 200 PPP loans totaling 
more than $7 million, that retained more than 1,300 jobs. The 
average loan size was about $36,000, and 86 percent of their 
PPP loans went to ethnic minorities, including 67 percent to 
Black business owners.
    And there are stories like this from CDFIs across the 
country, demonstrating that these small loans are critical to 
saving thousands of jobs.
    As CDFIs, our priority is one that I know is shared with 
the members of this Committee, that PPP must help our Main 
Street businesses that are the backbones of our communities 
survive this pandemic.
    OFN is pleased to see Congress poised to include another 
round of PPP funding in the COVID relief bill. In the next 
round, we would like to see another set-aside for mission 
lenders, streamlined forgiveness for loans of $150,000 or less, 
a minimum processing fee so that small loans are able to have 
their costs covered for lenders, addressing the issues of tax 
treatment and the deduction of EIDL advances that are stressing 
borrowers.
    For example, Universal Logistics, a women- and minority-
owned trucking company, based in Glen Burnie, Maryland, 
received a $20,000 PPP loan from LEDC. However, because of the 
deduction of the EIDL advance from her PPP forgiveness, she now 
has an unexpected $9,000 loan to repay. Other CDFI clients that 
expected fully forgiven loans are facing that same reality.
    We are pleased to see many of these fixes in the framework 
for the HEROS Small Business Lifeline Act and the bipartisan 
Emergency COVID Relief Framework. With these fixes in place, 
CDFIs stand ready to make a new round of PPP loans and deliver 
other Federal relief to small businesses. But we need capital 
and capacity to meet borrower needs. CDFIs need a new infusion 
of equity capital, and we were pleased to see a bipartisan 
framework for the COVID relief package include $12 billion for 
CDFIs, including $2 billion for rapid response grants in the 
industry.
    This institutional-level capital will enhance our capacity 
to support our most vulnerable businesses and communities, both 
as part of PPP but beyond into the recovery. Focusing on 
reaching unbanked and underbanked businesses through the 
mission lenders that are best equipped to serve them will 
ensure a more equitable recovery.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I look 
forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Williams follows:]
    
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    Chairman Rubio. Thank you. And finally, Mr. Zernick.
    Mr. Zernick, make sure your audio is turned on, please.

STATEMENT OF THOMAS G. ZERNICK, PRESIDENT OF SBA LENDING, FIRST 
                 HOME BANK, ST. PETERSBURG, FL

    Mr. Zernick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Tens of thousands of 
small businesses have permanently closed due to COVID-19, and 
more are closing each day. In the Tampa Bay area, 22 percent of 
small businesses operational in January are now gone, and 
nationwide, 25 percent of small businesses have been shuttered. 
Surviving businesses have lost 21 percent of revenues, on 
average. So, by definition, small businesses have been 
adversely affected by COVID-19.
    The PPP, which provided two and a half months of payroll 
and modest operating expenses was a lifesaver for many small 
businesses. But that was nine months ago, and the pandemic is 
far from over. PPP Round 1 has proven not to be enough.
    As Congress deliberates the next relief package, I would 
like to offer three recommendations. First, we need no-cost 
fixes to help borrowers and lenders through the first round of 
PPP and ensure participation in a second round. The CARES Act 
had to be drafted and implemented at warp speed, but with 
lessons learned we need to address the issues we have lived 
through so PPP can work better. Specifically, Congress should 
simplify the Round 1 forgiveness process to create an appetite 
for Round 2.
    Repeal the requirement to deduct EIDL advances from the 
forgiveness amount so borrowers are not left with unanticipated 
debt and lenders are not left with thousands of loans of 
$10,000 or less.
    Strengthen lender hold-harmless provisions to clarify 
lenders' liability.
    Allow reapplications for loans inadvertently repaid or 
canceled, and provide a reinstatement process to adjust loan 
size if there was an error, and broaden the eligible use of 
proceeds.
    These are just some, not all, of the no-cost fixes we need. 
Individually, these fixes may seem small, but together they 
would make the program substantially more palatable. And while 
you consider these fixes, please remember, lenders are slogging 
through 5.2 million forgiveness applications without clear 
guidance, and given the onerous process, borrowers are 
concerned they will face unexpected debt they cannot afford. 
Unless Congress addresses these implementation issues, there 
will be many lenders unwilling to participate in a Round 2. 
Failing to make reasonable program changes would be a tragedy.
    Next, we need long-term small business recovery initiatives 
immediately. PPP provided emergency short-term relief for 
America's workers, not long-term recovery for the small 
businesses. While PPP is the most innovative approach to 
supplementing unemployment insurance this country has seen, it 
does not assure that small business will survive these 
difficult times.
    A serious recovery package needs to support the small 
itself. Small businesses need long-term working capital 
available through the 7(a) program. During the Great Recession, 
I experienced the benefits of an increased SBA guarantee, 
borrower and lender fee waivers, and an increased authorization 
cap. These provisions, among others, would once again increase 
the flow of capital to small businesses. Without 7(a) program 
enhancements, the millions of employees we worked so hard to 
keep on payroll, using PPP, may not have an employer to go back 
to.
    Finally, Congress needs to use existing funding to extend 
the hugely successful Section 1112 payments. Now that most of 
the 6-months of these payments are ending, banks like mine are 
being inundated with payment deferral requests. This should not 
be a surprise. Economic conditions for most borrowers have not 
improved since March. Borrowers in the traditional SBA programs 
must pass needs-based tests to be eligible for SBA loans, so by 
definition, borrowers receiving Section 1112 payments are among 
the most vulnerable small businesses in the country and exactly 
the entities we should be helping.
    Congress must include Section 1112 payment extensions and 
other related technical fixes immediately, including making the 
payments non-taxable. Otherwise, I fear that we will see more 
borrower loan defaults, as they struggle to make payments. This 
will cause significant stress on the SBA portfolios, rather 
than taking advantage of the already-funded Section 1112 
preventative relief.
    In closing, my experience tells me that the best path 
forward for the next relief package is one that does not merely 
rely on a second round of PPP, but rather includes the full 
range of my comprehensive recommendations. I am encouraged by 
the proposals that take this holistic approach and include 7(a) 
enhancements and Section 1112 extensions for long-term recovery 
alongside PPP for short-term emergency relief.
    Thanks for this opportunity to share my thoughts. I look 
forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Zernick follows:]
    
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    Chairman Rubio. Thank you all, and let me start with Mr. 
Holtz-Eakin. I am going to ask you, in your testimony you note 
the function that PPP served as an emergency injection of 
liquidity into small businesses. What role do you think that 
that played overall in the U.S. economy in April, and the 
numbers I just cited earlier?
    Mr. Holtz-Eakin. Mr. Chairman, it was a crucial support for 
the U.S. economy. Between the middle of March and the month of 
April we lost 22 million jobs in the United States, and the 
downdraft was severe and it was enormously quick. The PPP put 
$500 billion out into the small business sector during four 
weeks of that period. And we saw employment rebound in May in a 
way that we had not anticipated, and I think that the PPP was 
crucial for that occurrence.
    And so I think it should be judged as nothing but a 
success, given the circumstances in which it was introduced.
    Chairman Rubio. Ms. McFarland, you pointed out that one of 
the things that helped you with PPP and EIDL is you had a prior 
relationship with your lender, your bank, and up-to-date 
financials, and so forth. So I am leading toward the question, 
which is, in your opinion what is the biggest barrier for 
women- and minority-owned small businesses when they are 
applying for programs like this? We have heard it is the 
technical aspects of the application, in some cases awareness 
that it exists, and others.
    One of the studies that just came out yesterday talked 
about how while the distribution to distressed areas was 
generally in line with their percentage there are some urban 
area in the country that we had evidence of some failure, and 
one begins to wonder whether it is the lack of banking or 
lending infrastructure relationship in that area, or the lack 
of access to technical assistance for applications and so 
forth.
    So I am kind of supposing, leaning. I do not know what your 
answer is going to be but I am curious what your view is on 
what, beyond your own business, what do you think is the 
biggest barrier for others that are similarly situated in 
accessing these programs?
    Ms. McFarland. Sure. Thank you for the question. I 
completely with----
    Chairman Rubio. Is your microphone on, just so they can 
hear you? There you go.
    Ms. McFarland. Can you hear me?
    Chairman Rubio. Yes.
    Ms. McFarland. I completely agree with you, Chairman. I 
think one of the biggest barriers is finding an appropriate 
bank in the community of that business, to help them navigate 
the intricacies of these loan applications programs. We were 
fortunate enough to have an amazing partner. We had been with 
our bank for over two years, but I do know that that is not the 
case for most small businesses, and we do not take that for 
granted.
    Additionally, M&T Bank was in communication with us on 
almost a daily basis, either via phone calls or emails, and so 
I know, you know, we felt at ease navigating through the 
application process we had a bank like that. And I understand 
that most companies did not have access to that, which is a big 
barrier when applying.
    Chairman Rubio. Which leads me then to Ms. Williams, to 
talk about the importance of CDFIs and so forth. Obviously it 
is clear that you are supportive of a second round, as I think 
most members of the Committee are setting aside for the 
community lenders to further alleviate some of these 
disparities.
    I am curious, and perhaps if you have any recollection of 
this or can contribute to it, at one point during the second 
round the SBA made the decision that over, I believe it was a 
24-hour or 12-hour period of time, beginning at like 7 p.m. in 
the evening until 6 a.m. the following morning, the only 
lenders who could access the system, meaning send in 
applications, were lenders under a certain size or standard.
    And their rationale was because the larger lenders had 
already loaded up all the application formats and they were 
just pressing Send, and it was overloading the system. So by 
clearing that out, by stopping that from happening, it created 
online capacity to process. In essence, it created an express 
lane over a sustained period of time, a few hours, for the non-
large lenders to get their applications in. And my 
understanding is that that was a very smart--I am not sure it 
is something we need to legislate but it sounded like something 
that worked.
    Do you remember that happening, and apart from the dollars 
set-aside, a time set-aside, the mechanics of actually pushing 
through the application online and so forth became a real 
problem for the system they had set up online. Do you recall 
that part, and if not, even if you do not, I mean, is that 
something that you think would make sense in terms of helping 
CDFIs and others get their applications in?
    Ms. Williams. Yes, that dedicated access for small lenders 
was incredibly effective. CDFIs and their borrowers needed a 
little bit more time to be able to appropriately prepare their 
applications. They do not always have access to accountants or 
tax professionals to be able to prepare the application 
immediately. And so that first-come, first-served model really 
disadvantaged some of these business owners that needed more 
time to prepare.
    On the lender side, when you are a smaller lender, which 
might not have had an existing relationship with SBA and real 
knowledge of how to access and leverage the E-Tran system, 
there was a process where you had to sort of understand how to 
get your loans through and access the system. And so that 
dedicated window really opened up some space for small lenders 
to be able to get their borrowers' applications through the 
system without having to compete with Federal resource lenders 
during that time period.
    Chairman Rubio. And again, I am not sure that is something 
we need to put in a bill per se, but it was certainly a process 
that I know helped clear up the backlog, and I am hoping that 
we can figure out a way to make sure that happens again.
    Finally, Mr. Zernick, I am just curious. I mean, this would 
not have worked without the community banks and the 
nontraditional lenders, and so it just would not have, from a 
capacity standpoint. There is no way we could have done this 
with just the larger, major banks. We could not have done it 
without them, but we certainly could not have done it only with 
them. I can tell you that without regional and community banks 
and nontraditional lenders there is no way we would have 
reached the breadth and scope of small businesses that we did.
    So we are concerned about anything in a second round of 
assistance that would prevent banks from participating. In your 
view, what issues, what requirements, what prescriptions, what 
could prevent banks from participating in a second round of 
PPP?
    Mr. Zernick. Thank you, Chairman Rubio. Obviously we need 
to fix the forgiveness process for the Round 1 of PPP. We have 
had numerous, burdensome hurdles to go through with our clients 
regarding how to calculate the covered period, how to calculate 
the FTE calculation required. There are three separate 
applications. They all come with separate instructions. We 
simply need, in addition to more PPP, we need to fix the 
forgiveness process in Round 1.
    We do not need a blanket waiver. We simply need a 
streamlined process for forgiveness so that banks like ours, 
that have 9,000 loans to process forgiveness on, can focus on a 
next round of PPP under Round 2.
    So lenders need, right now we do not need to calculate the 
forgiveness amount. We should not need to justify that the 
documents provided by the borrowers support the forgiveness 
amount. We simply should validate the documents have been 
uploaded and that the application is complete and ready to 
submit to the SBA. These are the things we could do in the 
forgiveness piece of Round 1 that would free up our teams to be 
able to process Round 2 in PPP.
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you. Senator Cardin.
    Senator Cardin. Let me thank all four of our witnesses. I 
think this has been extremely helpful, giving us specific 
recommendations on how to improve these programs and what is 
needed.
    From the testimony of Ms. McFarland, Ms. Williams, and Mr. 
Zernick, it is obviously that you support PPP, another round, 
but you believe we need to do more, that it has got to be more 
comprehensive, we have got to deal with EIDL, we have got to 
deal with improvements in the current programs, and Mr. 
Zernick, you mentioned the 7(a) programs and other programs, 
the fee waivers, things like that, that are critically 
important for us to deal with. So I appreciate that.
    I want to first go, if I could, to Ms. McFarland. It seems 
to me what you are telling us is that PPP was a lifesaver for 
you initially, but you also needed the EIDL help in order to 
pay for those expenses that were not covered by PPP. Otherwise, 
you may never have reached that point where you are today, 
where you have been able to adjust, to try to keep your 
business afloat as the economy is rebounding. Am I correct that 
you needed both PPP and EIDL in order to get through the 
initial period?
    Ms. McFarland. Yes, absolutely. Like I said before, we had 
to furlough all of our employees, all 10, and the PPP allowed 
us to hire five employees back. We did extend two return offers 
to two of our employees, but they decided to utilize the 
unemployment benefits and they also were living with at-risk 
family members. And the other three employees that we were not 
able to extend return offers to were project managers, and 
because we had not seen a project since February it was not 
feasible for us to bring them back.
    However, the warehouse staff that we were able to bring 
back allowed us to win a sizable PPE distribution contract in 
April, whereby we were housing and distributing over a million 
pieces of PPE to over 100 community health centers.
    So having our employees back was amazing, and then we sat 
down and we were trying to determine what we could do to 
generate revenue, and we still knew that we needed additional 
capital. So the EIDL loan went to our overhead and our working 
capital and utilities, like our internet bill. And because 
those funds were freed, we then were able to utilize those 
funds to transition our facilities into an athletic and 
academic training center.
    Senator Cardin. Thank you. Ms. Williams, one of your 
recommendations--so we are trying to figure out how is the best 
way to get resources into the underbanked or underserved 
minority communities--and one of your recommendations is that 
there should not be an offset from what is forgiven by the EIDL 
advance of funds that were received. Currently they offset the 
loan forgiveness by the amount of the EIDL advance. Am I 
correct that you believe there should not be an offset, that 
that is just creating an additional burden on small businesses, 
and they need help?
    Ms. Williams. That is correct. We have heard from our CDFI 
lenders that borrowers were essentially unaware of this 
provision when they sought out their PPP loans, and as they 
start to seek out, you know, apply for forgiveness, it is 
coming as quite a shock that when they thought they were 
receiving both an EIDL grant that they would not have to pay 
back and a PPP loan that was fully forgivable, that now they 
are actually faced with a loan payment that they were not 
anticipating.
    And then, on the lender side, I think they are also faced 
with having to hold and service a loan that they also did not 
anticipate, that they expected was going to be able to be 
forgiven and would not have to remain on their books. So it is 
creating challenges for both borrowers and lenders.
    Senator Cardin. As we talk to some of the lenders, it is 
just a natural bias to try to get larger loans rather than 
smaller loans, because of the processing costs, et cetera, it 
just makes sense. One of your observations was the processing 
fee on the smaller loans. If a small business, if a very small 
business has to rely upon a commercial loan as part of the PPP 
program in order to get access to the help, if the processing 
fee does not match the cost of the lender it is going to be 
much more challenging to get that type of activity, 
particularly again in underbanked communities.
    Am I reading that recommendation that you think the 
processing thing has to match the cost here and not be capped 
at an amount that may be reasonable, percentagewise, for a 
larger loan but not for a smaller loan?
    Ms. Williams. That is correct. For small loans lenders are 
finding that the cost that they are incurring, both on the 
front end for preparing and processing the applications is very 
staff- and resource-intensive work, especially when you are 
dealing with the populations that CDFIs tend to need additional 
support in preparing documentation and getting those loans 
ready.
    And on the forgiveness end, there also is an unforeseen and 
additional cost that lenders are encountering that together are 
making it so that some lenders are actually losing money on 
making these smaller-dollar PPP loans. And for CDFIs that 
really want to be able to provide these resources to their 
communities, you know, this is a really challenging position to 
be in because they cannot actually cover the full cost of being 
able to provide those loans. So a flat fee that is reasonable, 
that really will allow lenders to be able to realize the full 
cost of making those small-dollar loans will actually encourage 
that small-dollar lending from more lenders.
    Senator Cardin. And I really appreciate the role that CDFIs 
play and thank you for your leadership on that. And I want to 
acknowledge, we have had bipartisan support in empowering CDFIs 
in this process. I want to thank Senator Rubio for his help. 
Obviously, Senator Warner has been one of the real champions on 
this and has been leading the fight in regards to the capital 
issue that you are referring to. And we certainly had 
cooperation from Secretary Mnuchin as we tried to deal with 
these issues.
    I just really wanted to put that on the table because I 
think we recognized that needed to be done. And we were 
disappointed that the SBA did not follow our initial request to 
develop ways that we made sure that minority and underserved 
communities were served.
    Mr. Zernick, one point. Your suggestions in regards to the 
7(a) program, because I agree with you on this. If I 
understand, you believe we need to improve the current tools 
that are available. 7(a) loans are vitally important. It is the 
largest program we have under the SBA prior to the PPP program. 
And you are suggesting that the fee waivers and other issues 
that were involved in that should be part of this process, to 
make sure that we respond properly for COVID-19?
    Mr. Zernick. Absolutely, Senator Cardin. I really think we 
need to create a business vaccine. We are doing it now to save 
humans. We need a business vaccine that will save our business 
communities, and that vaccine needs to be a cocktail that is 
made up of another round of PPP, plus our no-cost fixes. It has 
to include a long-term working capital solution by using the 
7(a) enhancements of an increased SBA guarantee.
    We need help lending into this pandemic through the 7(a) 
program, we need the fee waivers for our clients, and we need 
an increased authorization cap. We need to be able to prepare 
to help businesses launch and relaunch and restart their 
businesses going forward.
    And lastly, the 4,200 SBA clients at First Home Bank need 
Senator Coons' 1112 payment extension. It was a tremendous 
help, and thank you, Senator Coons. But now it is time for more 
of this. Our businesses often cannot make their payments. We 
are inundated with deferral requests. Delinquencies are 
increasing. We need to protect our portfolio and our small 
business community, and that business vaccine, while it 
includes Chairman Rubio's PPP program with the no-cost fixes, 
we need that 7(a) enhancement and we need Senator Coons' 1112 
payment extensions. Thank you, Senator Cardin.
    Senator Cardin. Thank you. I will point out, I strongly 
agree with you on Senator Coons' proposals. There is actually 
money that remained in that program, enough to cover moving 
forward. So it is just a matter of repurposing the money that 
was already in that program.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you. Senator Risch.
    Senator Risch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I 
want to join the others in kudos to you for having led this 
fight. It was tremendously successful. The other important 
thing that America does not know, and probably never will know 
because it does not get reported, is this was a bipartisan 
effort, a for real, honest-to-goodness bipartisan effort. The 
Chairman deserves much credit for that, being able to bring the 
two sides together.
    We get lots and lots of stories about arguing and fighting 
up here and not being able to get anything done, and PPP was 
certainly a great exception to that. And I also want to thank 
the Chairman for allowing all of us to have input into this. We 
all had our fingerprints on this, to some degree, though it 
certainly was your effort and deserves your name on it.
    For people like myself who do not necessarily worship at 
the altar of government solutions to problems, I have to tell 
you I was astonished, first of all, by the fact that this 
program came together as quickly and as well as it did, and 
then I was even more astonished that it actually worked out in 
the field.
    If it had not been so ugly it would be amusing the way the 
media ran around the country looking for failures in this 
program, and hence they found them, and as you said, Mr. 
Chairman, it is not perfect. There is no government program 
that is perfect and there are certainly things that could be 
done better, and under situations the government just cannot 
fix. The media was very skillful in going around and writing or 
putting on stories on TV and the media about this. Those of us 
who have worked this know that this was a tremendous success.
    I think, too, another person that deserves real kudos here, 
and I think when they write the history of this thing he will 
get his own chapter in the book, and that is Secretary of the 
Treasury Mnuchin. I have to tell you, I was absolutely amazed. 
We wound up with glitches starting right away, as you do with 
any program, and every time we did we would call over to 
Treasury and talk to Steve Mnuchin, not to a bureaucrat, not to 
an assistant, but we talked to the Secretary of Treasury. They 
were not necessarily big things, but he paid very close 
attention to them, and at the conclusion he, unlike what you 
usually get in dealing with an agency, said, ``Well, you know, 
I think we can fix that.'' And he went to work in good faith 
and resolved virtually every problem I was associated with, and 
I have to think that every Member of Congress had similar kind 
of a situation.
    Mr. Zernick, you will be interested to hear that--you spoke 
quite a bit about the forgiveness program. To me, the 
forgiveness program was the poster child for the good work that 
Secretary Mnuchin did, by the time we got to him to complain 
about it, and it became obvious very soon that we had left way, 
way, way too much up to the bureaucrats to design a program for 
forgiveness. The first thing we saw was about a one-inch sheet 
of papers with questions on it for the forgiveness. By the time 
we got to Mnuchin, he was already on the third iteration of 
that, having given directions to the bureaucrats to change 
that.
    So we continue to work on that. I think your suggestions 
are well taken. We understand it is on both sides, not only on 
the lender but on the borrower, and that is getting better, I 
can tell you.
    Look, this has been a real success. I never thought I would 
be able to sit here and look at how well this has actually 
operated out in the field. I think everyone is in agreement, 
again on a bipartisan basis, we need another round of this. I 
am sure that everybody on the Committee has the same view of 
this that I do, and we just shake our head as leadership and 
the body as a whole goes through these machinations in trying 
to get to another COVID bill, when we are in agreement on this.
    I mean, if we threw this bill out on the floor it would get 
unanimous support on both sides of the aisle and in both 
houses, and yet we cannot move because we have these other 
moving parts. There are about 18 or 20 moving parts in here, 
and just because we have disagreement on some of them it is 
disturbing and disheartening that we cannot move this forward 
when we are all in agreement on it.
    In any event, hope springs eternal, and we will proceed 
with that.
    I want to ask one question before I yield the floor here, 
and that is I think, from all the testimony we have heard 
today, and what we have heard over the period of time, is that 
EIDL has not worked nearly as well as PPP has, and so we are 
interested in seeing, in the next round, that we do better with 
EIDL. There are a number of things that need to be addressed.
    One of the interesting questions I have is the situation, 
the fact where people have borrowed both from PPP and taken 
money from EIDL, both of them. Can somebody give me an idea of 
how widespread this is? What percent of borrowers, or 
applicants, applied to both EIDL and PPP and received funds 
from both? Can anybody give me an answer on that?
    Chairman Rubio. I am sure from the staff level we could 
find that answer from the SBA if we do not have it handy.
    Senator Risch. How about a general sense? Can anybody tell 
me, is that widespread or is that a narrow lane of people that 
are caught up in that? I understand the problem. I just want to 
know how wide the problem is.
    Chairman Rubio. That applied for both.
    Senator Risch. It was not rare.
    Chairman Rubio. I am not sure we have the exact percentage 
but it certainly was not--I mean, I think--and maybe one of our 
two lenders that have been involved in the program can tell us 
how common it was for them to see people that were in both 
camps, but without giving us a raw number.
    Senator Risch. Can one of you--do you dare take a stab at 
that, as to how widespread? Is it over half? Under half? Is it 
a fourth? Is it 10 percent?
    Nobody wants to run with that.
    Mr. Zernick. Senator, this is Tom Zernick. I can tell you 
that as we process forgiveness today we are probably seeing 10 
to 20 percent of the forgiveness applications including an EIDL 
advance. So it is less than 50 percent, but again, those are 
all advances that are now going to be booked on our balance 
sheet as loans that these borrowers have to pay back, that they 
thought were grants. So again, anything we can do to get those 
paid off, get those forgiven, would be tremendously helpful to 
small businesses.
    Senator Risch. I get that, and I understand it. I guess 
what I am driving at here is I am looking for a price tag, and 
until we get that nailed down it is kind of hard to make a 
decision on that. But I guess the first one is what percent 
did, and then secondly we can maybe monetize that and see what 
the price tag would be to do that.
    Chairman Rubio. Well, I am certain we can get that number 
from the SBA, and we will make sure we get that. We will call 
them today.
    Senator Risch. All right, thank you. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman.
    Senator Cardin. Mr. Chairman, this is Ben Cardin. Could I 
just respond to Senator Risch just very briefly, if I might, 
because I want to make sure we get this point clarified.
    To me, the major problem with the EIDL program was there 
was not enough funds put into it, because in administering it 
they capped the loan at $150,000, even though there was $2 
million authorized by Congress went into individual loans, and 
the grant program was supposed to be $10,000 and they capped it 
at $1,000 per employee, and it averaged between $4,000 and 
$5,000.
    Now we have colleagues on both sides of the aisle that have 
objected to that type of administration, but that seemed to be 
the major problem that we heard of in regards to the 
administration of the EIDL program. And thank you, Mr. 
Chairman, for allowing me to clarify that.
    Senator Risch. Can I respond briefly, Mr. Chairman?
    Chairman Rubio. Yes.
    Senator Risch. Ben, I hear what you are saying and I agree 
with that. But it was not just underfunding. I mean, when the 
inspector general went in there was considerably more fraud in 
the EIDL program than there was in the PPP program, and I 
always hate to say that because that becomes the headlines, 
instead of the success of the program, where you have a blemish 
like this that you can fix, and should fix. That is something 
that we should focus on. And do not get me wrong--I do not 
question your assessment that EIDL is underfunded. But there 
are some other issues there too that need to be addressed.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you. Senator Shaheen.
    Senator Shaheen. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will also 
leave my mask on in the interest of all of the people who may 
need to go home for the holidays.
    I want to echo Senator Cardin's comments about your 
leadership on this Committee, Senator Rubio. I have very much 
appreciated the creativity with which you have approached your 
position as Chair and, of course, your leadership as we work to 
get the PPP program done, and I was very honored to be part of 
that group, to work with you and Senator Cardin and Senator 
Collins to help design that program. And hopefully we can get 
another round. I think all of us agree it is critical to get 
that out.
    I also want to join with everyone who has talked about the 
success of the PPP program and really good work, despite some 
of the difficulties, that SBA did, and lenders did across the 
country, in getting funding out to small businesses who needed 
it. It has been a big success and hopefully we can get another 
round that will allow us to make some of the corrections that 
we have heard people suggest today.
    I want to start with you, Mr. Holtz-Eakin, because, as a 
macroeconomist and somebody who recognizes that because you 
have worked in the Congressional Budget Office understands the 
challenges in Congress. Can you talk about what you think the 
impact will be if we are not able to get additional help for 
our small businesses and broader help in the economy in the way 
that we did with the CARES package back in March? What are we 
going to see if we fail to do that?
    Mr. Holtz-Eakin. I think we will see tremendous damage to 
the labor market, the disruption of employee-employer 
relationships. People then have to find new jobs, perhaps in 
different sectors of the economy. That is a slow and costly 
process for people. So that is the paramount concern.
    It also undercuts other efforts that Congress is 
attempting. So losing all those businesses is a big disruption 
of the supply side of the economy. In the absence of that 
functioning supply side, checks to low-income households do not 
stimulate the economy, additional measures that Congress might 
look at on the spending side will not stimulate the economy.
    And so it is a crucial part of moving forward with the 
recovery.
    Senator Shaheen. And we heard Mr. Zernick say that 25 
percent of small businesses have closed since the start of the 
pandemic. Have you seen any estimates about how many additional 
small businesses will close if they do not get help?
    Mr. Holtz-Eakin. I have not seen any such estimates, but we 
know that the core problem, which is spending on services, 
often provided by small businesses that involved personal 
contact, has not recovered. I mean, that simply has not come 
back. The initial decline cost us a quarter of small 
businesses. To go through another surge and have a comparable 
pullback I think is a real danger.
    Senator Shaheen. Thank you. Ms. McFarland, you talked about 
the help that you received from the PPP loan and the EIDL both 
loan and grant. Can you talk with more specificity about which 
aspect of each worked for you and how they worked together, or 
did not, to address your needs?
    Ms. McFarland. Sure. Well, PPP and EIDL were a crucial 
lifeline to maintain our business functions. Without it, our 
doors would simply still be closed today. The PPP allowed us to 
rehire five employees. It allowed us to pay for rent. It also 
allowed us to provide health care benefits to those employees, 
while EIDL went towards our overhead, some working capital.
    But the EIDL advance was something that we found difficult 
to understand when we are now understanding that it will be 
deducted from our loan forgiveness. But both were incredibly 
crucial to the sustainability of our business, and now, because 
of these funds, we are able to employ new small businesses to 
operate and clean our facilities, and we are providing a 
semblance of normalcy to some of the kids in our community. We 
have seen 2,200 kids come through our doors, COVID-safe, of 
course. But to see these kids' faces light up, and we would 
only be able to see that because of the funds that we received 
from both PPP and EIDL.
    Senator Shaheen. That is great. If I could ask one more 
question, Mr. Chairman, and let me also say, in answer to 
Senator Risch, we have heard from a number of businesses in New 
Hampshire who have also been very shocked by the fact that they 
have to deduct their EIDL advance from their PPP, and the 
hardship that it places on them. So I think we would share the 
concern that we ought to look at addressing that.
    Senator Risch. I think we all share in that information we 
have gotten from our small businesses.
    Senator Shaheen. Mr. Zernick, you have extensive experience 
in SBA lending, and I wonder if you have seen the new forms 
that you may have been collecting from borrowers seeking 
forgiveness of their PPP loans. One of the things that we have 
heard from people is about this new form that is called ``Loan 
Necessity Questionnaire.'' And it asks borrowers to complete, 
and lenders to collect responses to a detailed series of 
questions about PPP loans over $2 million.
    Now I appreciate the need to get that information, but 
there is real concern from a number of these businesses, 
particularly we have heard in New Hampshire from the Joslin 
Diabetes Center, from Lamprey Health, from Bi-State Primary 
Care Association, all of whom are dealing with medical cases. 
When they submitted this additional paperwork they are 
concerned about how this information is going to be used. Have 
you heard those concerns as you have met with small business 
people, and do you have any sense, based on your experience, of 
how this information might be used?
    Mr. Zernick. Yes. Thank you, Senator. The Loan Necessity 
Questionnaire will impact 41 loans of the 9,000 loans our bank 
did, so we did not do a lot of loans over $2 million. But I can 
guarantee you that this was not disclosed up front, and my fear 
is that with the start of this questionnaire there could be a 
trickle-down effect, where SCA and others continue to 
investigate and do a deeper dive into the validity and the 
necessity for these businesses to acquire the PPP loan.
    So while we want to help our small businesses complete that 
questionnaire, again, I feel it is unnecessary outreach, and 
again, it is going to send red flags across the PPP who, for 
legitimate reasons, had larger payrolls and were truly eligible 
for the loans over $2 million.
    SBA has already agreed to review all the loans over $2 
million. To me, that should be sufficient oversight.
    Senator Shaheen. Well, thank you. I share that concern, and 
that is certainly what we have heard from the businesses who 
have called our office.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hope we can look into this and 
try and get more information.
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you. Okay. Is Senator Scott on the 
web? He is not? Okay. Senator Cantwell.
    Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and sorry, we 
are also having a hearing in Transportation and Commerce on how 
to get the vaccine distributed, so I am running back and forth, 
two very, very, very important hearings. I hope everybody is 
absorbing all this information because we have so much work to 
do.
    Chairman Rubio. I would argue interrelated, right?
    Senator Cantwell. Very interrelated. In fact, I think I 
will just start with that.
    I do want to ask about broadcast and the newspapers, but, 
Mr. Holtz-Eakin, you have mentioned this issue of municipality 
liquidity program and why did they turn back the money, because 
we could be using it. I am hearing from my cities and counties 
and districts. We just talked to the major distributors 
downstairs, with FedEx and UPS, and they are like, ``Yeah, we 
are going to get it there,'' but I am like, ``Well, what 
happens once it gets there? You still have to have an operation 
on the ground to distribute the vaccine, and you will have some 
hard-to-serve communities, like in my case Indian country, 
which is very big and vast. Who is going to be there to 
distribute the vaccine?''
    So don't we need to be using those municipal dollars to 
help our cities and counties and public health people get the 
distribution system? I do not want to see another Puerto Rico, 
where we get it to the docks but we cannot get it to the 
location.
    And then, Ms. Williams, I wanted to ask you, you know, we 
have been working hard on this broadcast and newspaper, because 
broadcasters lost 40 percent of their advertising revenue 
before 2018, and then they lost another 40 percent of their 
advertising revenue due to COVID. We issued a report showing 
how essential it is for public health information that we have 
broadcasters and newspapers to do that, so we definitely 
support a PPP program that helps treat those organizations. 
Just because you are an affiliate does not mean you have got a 
big boss that is helping you with lots of money. Talk to any 
affiliate and they will tell you, they are usually getting 
screwed over by the entity, controlled, the profits ripped out. 
All sorts of things are happening. Being an affiliate is not 
such a great thing for the affiliate.
    So this means that African American radio stations that are 
part of Urban One, like Baltimore, and Spanish-speaking 
stations like Playa 98.1 in Fort Myers, they do not get relief. 
And, to me, we should be allowing for the distribution of 
information, particularly during this crisis.
    We had Mr. Busby, the president of the U.S. Black Chamber, 
here, Black-owned newspapers and radio stations, who basically 
said, ``Yeah, we need this help, because we are the source for 
trust in a community.'' So we want to see relief. Just because 
people are part of a larger ownership does not mean we cannot 
direct help to the individual affiliates. So if we could 
address those two issues I would be so appreciative. Thank you. 
Mr. Eakin?
    Mr. Holtz-Eakin. So the design of the PPP was essentially a 
decision to provide grants to small businesses in the form of 
these forgivable loans, and so the question in helping 
municipalities and larger businesses really was, do you want to 
continue with a grant formulation or do you want to move to a 
lending solution? The decision was made to have these 
facilities be lending facilities, the Municipal Liquidity 
Facility and the Main Street Lending Program. Neither was 
particularly successful.
    The economic equivalent of a grant program for 
municipalities, particularly in distribution of the COVID-19 
vaccines, is to go back to a grant program and do it through 
appropriations. And given the importance of this to the health 
of the Nation and the functioning of the economy, I do not 
think there should be any hesitation in doing that by Congress.
    Senator Shaheen. Thank you. Thank you.
    Ms. Williams, about the affiliates and helping--look, we 
did a report in the Commerce Committee on the minority side, 
but basically local news is the most trusted news source, and 
in these communities where you have, again, diversity, they are 
also the most trusted news source. So how do we get them help?
    Ms. Williams. Thank you, Senator Cantwell. I 100 percent 
agree that local radio and newspapers are key in reaching 
minority businesses. They are, as you said, trusted and 
reliable sources of information. And CDFIs actually use them to 
reach their potential clients, and they can provide, you know, 
culturally and language-competent information. They are also 
really helpful for small CDFIs with limiting marketing budgets 
to be able to reach these potential clients.
    So we agree that they are critical to the flow of 
information, to making sure that small business owners are 
aware of the resources that are available to them.
    Senator Shaheen. So I am going to take a wild one here. 
People say never ask a witness a question you do not know what 
they are going to say, but Mr. Holtz-Eakin, I am going to 
double down on you today.
    This is my point. The press is helping us get perfect 
information. The competition of the press helps us get perfect 
information. Markets need perfect information. So do we not 
have to figure out how we are going to save a broader news 
information source in competition? Do we not need to do 
something as we are sorting out these legal issues on 
antitrust?
    Mr. Holtz-Eakin. I think the virtues of competition cannot 
be overstated, and that is true in this business as well. 
Preserving that competition is an enormous part of the 
portfolio of this Committee, because it is new entrants, 
smaller competitors, who, in all industries, provide the sort 
of innovation and competitive impulse. They give us better 
results and outcomes.
    Senator Shaheen. Thank you. And about 75 percent of U.S. 
employment.
    So thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you. Senator Coons. I thought you 
were on the Web. Now you are here. Omnipresent.
    Senator Coons. Would you like me to yield to my colleague 
from Iowa? I am happy to. Would you like me to proceed or would 
you like me to yield?
    Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our witnesses. 
Thank you, in particular, to Senators Rubio and Cardin for 
having led this Committee in such a remarkable way. As a number 
of our witnesses, who have been doing a terrific job of being 
the voices of small business and of the lending community, have 
conveyed, this is, in some ways, the underappreciated, unsung 
hero of pandemic response. In a strong bipartisan way, members 
like Senators Shaheen and Cardin, Senator Collins, and Chairman 
Rubio have worked tirelessly to put together and then deliver 
on a package which has made an enormous difference.
    There is a long road to recovery for small business and for 
the employees of small businesses all over the country. I hear 
from folks, literally daily. I got several texts this morning 
from restaurant owners, from folks who work at restaurants, 
from our Chamber, and from folks who represent businesses large 
and small in my State, asking when will Congress do another 
round of PPP. And I am grateful for all who have worked on the 
EIDL, on the Debt Relief Program, in particular, David Brown 
and my team, who has really helped lead that. Thank you, Mr. 
Zernick, for recognizing the way in which the SBA Debt Relief 
Initiative really has made a lasting difference, and I think we 
should extend that.
    But I just wanted to make sure that we drill down on just a 
few of these issues.
    Small business owners across my State, from Warren Station, 
a family-owned business in Fenwick Island, almost literally the 
southeast point of the State, to Eat Clean, which is a full-
service, relatively new, startup juice bar I recently visited 
in Wilmington, have seen on the ground the reality of what the 
dramatic drop in employment, in profitability, in opportunity 
has meant for small business employees and for small business 
owners during the course of this pandemic.
    Ms. Williams, if I might, both I wanted to thank you for 
the way that the Opportunity Finance Network has been an 
engaged and effective advocate, particularly on behalf of those 
who make access to credit more possible, more real through 
CDFIs and minority-serving institutions. Two frequent concerns 
from very small business owners related to the complexity of 
applying for forgiveness and the tax consequences. I know these 
have been covered by other members, but these are the sorts of 
issues I hear day in and day out. Tell me about the importance 
of these concerns for the borrowers that Opportunity Finance 
members serve, and what you have heard so far today in this 
hearing about how we can address this, and quickly, in the 
bills that have been proposed recently.
    Ms. Williams. Thank you, Senator Coons. We have heard 
extensively about how borrowers are concerned about the 
complexity associated with applying for forgiveness, and for 
lenders, quite frankly, who are continually getting new 
guidance coming from SBA and Treasury. The rules are changing. 
And there has been a little bit of hesitation, I think on the 
part of some CDFIs to start moving forward with their borrowers 
into the forgiveness process, because there is an anticipation 
that the rules could still change and Congress might make a 
bunch of additional changes in another stimulus bill.
    So I think that uncertainty is creating a lot of 
hesitation, and I think it also may impacted demand from small 
businesses, quite frankly, going forward, if they cannot 
understand exactly how their loans are going to be forgiven if 
they are facing a lot of unforeseen and unanticipated costs 
associated with their PPP loans that they did not expect to 
have. That is going to discourage borrowers who maybe sat out 
the first round, or couldn't get access, from trying to access 
PPP and also for borrowers who might be looking into a second 
draw.
    The tax implications are also of great concern to some of 
the borrowers that are CDFIs are encountering, and I think that 
it is crucial that in the next relief bill that Congress 
address these issues in order to make sure that both lenders 
and borrowers understand the full implications and costs 
associated with the program and are able to enter into these 
PPP loans with that full understanding.
    Senator Coons. And Ms. Williams, how can we best grow the 
capacity of the CDFI industry and the number of CDFIs able and 
available to meet the needs of underserved communities and 
underbanked communities?
    Ms. Williams. The most important thing that Congress can do 
is strengthen the institutions and lenders that are already 
working in our most underserved communities, and Congress can 
do that by immediately providing direct appropriations for the 
CDFI fund for rapid response grants. They provide critical 
equity capital that CDFIs then use to leverage low-cost debt 
from our bank and private sector partners, and this allows us 
to not only be able to make PPP loans but also to provide 
additional products that borrowers need, like working capital, 
but also providing things like loan forbearance and deferrals 
or other emergency relief programs to help borrowers really 
meet their needs.
    And, quite frankly, you know, there are 1,100 certified 
CDFIs working in urban, rural, and native communities across 
the country. We are ready to deliver this capital. We have the 
expertise. We are in communities. We are on the ground. We know 
how to mobilize. And so deploying those rapid response grants 
to the CDFI community is a way to make sure that these Federal 
resources are able to reach our most vulnerable businesses 
quickly and effectively.
    Senator Coons. I am excited about the bill that is right 
before us, that has been proposed by a bipartisan working 
group, that would deliver at least $300 billion in aid. There 
has long been bipartisan support for a prioritized PPP or a P4, 
to serve the hardest-hit small employers with carveouts for 
small and underserved communities. It has also got some 
significant provisions about small business grants, addressing 
some of the expensing and tax liabilities, some of the overlap 
between EIDL and PPP that has been addressed.
    But I also want to--I hope we have time in future hearings 
to talk about the ways in which we ensure an equitable recovery 
going forward. Senator Scott and I just introduced the Next 
Generation Entrepreneur Corps Act, which would create a 
fellowship program with a stipend and mentorship and access to 
capital, to hundreds of new entrepreneurs.
    The relief bill that is in front of us is the one I know my 
folks in Delaware want to see us move, so let's not miss this 
opportunity to make a lasting difference for the communities in 
need all over our country. But we also need to look forward to 
how we make this an equitable recovery.
    Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership of 
this Committee, and thank you to the witnesses today.
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you. Senator Ernst?
    Senator Ernst. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, 
as well, to all of our witnesses that are appearing here in 
person as well as virtually. And we all understand the last 
nine months have been. It has been an extraordinarily difficult 
time for our small businesses all across the United States. But 
through all of this, one of the few bright spots has been the 
Paycheck Protection Program, which, of course, we refer to as 
PPP. It has allowed businesses to keep their employees and 
survive the shutdowns and the economic slowdown.
    In my home state of Iowa, the PPP provided over 61,000 
small businesses in loans totaling over $5.1 billion of relief, 
and it did save hundreds of thousands of jobs. And while the 
PPP, which was created through bipartisan efforts on this 
Committee, has proven to be widely successful, it has very 
clear to all of us that an additional round of assistance is 
needed for small businesses that continue to be impacted by 
COVID-19.
    And just to share a story from Iowa, I did recently hear 
from a movie theater owner in Iowa who has been forced to take 
out multiple loans against their 103-year-old founder's life 
insurance policy just to get by. And it is these folks who 
really, really do need the assistance now. And that is why I am 
glad, Mr. Chairman, and to this Committee, that we are taking 
the time to identify ways that we can build upon PPP as we 
continue to work on an additional round of COVID relief.
    For the panel, I do have a couple of questions. As our 
businesses do continue to feel the impact of COVID-19, it is 
becoming clear that some businesses, like restaurants, will 
need more than a PPP loan to survive. A recent survey found 
that 41 percent of Iowa restaurant operators say it is unlikely 
that their restaurant will still be in business six months from 
now, and that is really heartbreaking, I think, for so many of 
us.
    Can you speak to the importance of immediately passing 
assistance for industries like restaurants, movie theaters, and 
maybe others, that, because of the circumstances have not been 
able to open back up? Can you just briefly speak to that and 
maybe share some thoughts on what might be necessary, and Mr. 
Holtz-Eakin, if we could start with you, please.
    Mr. Holtz-Eakin. Thank you, Senator. The challenge is how 
to operate the economy in the face of the virus, and there are 
some industries where PPE, testing, social distancing allow you 
to continue to operate, but we are finding with the surge in 
cases that in restaurants that is probably not going to be able 
to succeed. And in those circumstances, only to preserve these 
industries, essentially to wrap them in financial protection 
and carry them through until the virus recedes. That is what 
the PPP program did in the spring. A second round could do it 
again, going forward.
    Senator Ernst. Ms. McFarland, do you have some thoughts?
    Ms. McFarland. Absolutely. Similar to the restaurant and 
theater business, live event venues and producers have also 
been devastated by this. We always love to have tens of 
thousands of people together in one space, and right now we 
just are not able to do that. With the course of the virus and 
the schedule of the vaccines we are just not sure when we will 
be able to revitalize our core business. And so we are, myself 
and other small businesses, are in great need of additional 
funding in order for us to ensure that we can make it to that 
time.
    Senator Ernst. Thank you. Any of the panelists that are 
joining us virtually, if you have any thoughts?
    Ms. Williams. I would only add that the failure to support 
these businesses will have a devastating impact on the 
surrounding economy, so when businesses close it is not just 
the business owner who, of course, loses their livelihood, but 
employees lose their jobs. If the business owner has put their 
home up for collateral, they might be at risk of losing their 
home. The neighborhood loses access to a product or service.
    So there are really a lot of cascading impacts that result 
from the closure of businesses, and so I think it is important 
that we think about how we protect these businesses to make 
sure we are not encouraging these negative economic impacts.
    Senator Ernst. Thank you, Ms. Williams. And if I could 
continue with you, please, because you are speaking a little 
bit to the frustrations and the impacts to the surrounding 
businesses as well. We have heard from an increasing number of 
PPP participants about their frustration and the fact that 
business expenses paid for using PPP funds are taxable, 
according to the IRS. I have had many small business owners 
bring this directly to me. And I know we have spoken about this 
earlier in the testimony, but, Ms. Williams, in your specific 
testimony you note that this has become an unexpected expense 
for many of these businesses. And I do worry that this will be 
very devastating and have a huge impact on Iowa businesses.
    Can you discuss the importance of reversing this guidance 
and ensuring that these business expenses are deductible?
    Ms. Williams. Yes, absolutely. I think it is an 
unanticipated negative consequence of PPP loans where, you 
know, business owners who thought they were receiving a fully 
forgivable loan are now potentially facing a large tax bill 
when they file their taxes next spring, at a time when they can 
least afford to pay for it. I think that it is something that 
Congress should immediately address, because, again, this is 
not anything that the lenders or the borrowers had an 
understanding of when they entered into the agreement for the 
PPP loan, and it has the potential to have a significant 
financial impact on businesses that are already struggling.
    Senator Ernst. Yes, I agree completely. It is something 
that does need to be addressed.
    Mr. Holtz-Eakin, in your testimony you noted that the 
strengths of PPP outweigh the weaknesses in the program and 
that there are areas where we need to see improvement before 
another round of funding is passed. You suggest that the single 
most effective reform we could make to PPP is to change the 
focus from payroll to revenue, which you, and I tend to believe 
as well, that that would be the most reflective metric of the 
challenges that our small businesses are facing. Can you expand 
a little bit on that thought?
    Mr. Holtz-Eakin. As I said in my opening remarks, the 
driving economic force that was prevailing at the time of PPP's 
introduction was this enormous cash flow crunch across large 
swaths of the economy, so there were no customers and there was 
no revenue coming in. The ideal replacement would be to replace 
the revenue in its entirety and that would cover all the costs, 
and that would preserve those businesses.
    That is a lot more expensive. That would have been a 
trillion-dollar program, easily, last spring, and it will be 
even more expensive going forward. And I recognize, you know, 
there are challenges in meeting that, but that is the logic 
which to sort of not pick and choose among expenses but replace 
the business model when they cannot operate because of the 
virus.
    Senator Ernst. And certainly we want to make sure that as 
many of the jobs that were supported by PPP are protected. That 
is very, very important. But we do recognize that perhaps some 
changes need to be made as we are moving forward.
    Mr. Chairman, I do want to thank you and others on this 
Committee that have worked so diligently on this program. I 
cannot tell you how many times I hear from Iowa businesses how 
important this has been in protecting their employees and their 
livelihoods. And I look forward to working on some of these 
reforms and moving forward with additional relief for our small 
businesses. So thank you very much. I yield back.
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you, and thank you for all of your 
input, all of the members, but in particular all of the input 
you gave us on the unique needs of your State. It was 
instrumental, so thank you.
    OK. Let's go online here. Senator Booker, are you ready?
    Senator Booker. I am. Thanks so much, Chairman. And I just 
want to thank you, the Chair and the Ranking Member, for just 
holding this important hearing and all the work that we have 
been able to do together. I really want to thank the panelists 
as well for joining us.
    As we speak, we are negotiating this COVID package, and 
more relief is most certainly long overdue, but I am very, very 
concerned that this current package will not fully address the 
needs of the hardest hit small businesses and minority-owned 
businesses. We have already discussed a lot of the structural 
challenges of the PPP program, and really what small businesses 
have faced in challenges with getting the resources they need 
to stay alive, to survive. Many of them do not have the 
relationships with mainstream banking and that has been a 
problem.
    And so I am thrilled, as I have talked to a lot of the 
people who are on the front line negotiating this package, that 
we will have more resources for CDFIs, credit unions, small 
community banks, MDIs, and for the Minority Business 
Development Agency. We know that many small businesses are 
still, though, not yet in CDFI networks. We need to change it. 
And many small business owners simply are not really interested 
in taking on more debt.
    And so maybe I would just like to just ask quickly, to the 
whole panel, for anyone who might want to take this, but to me 
a piece of this equation has to be the State and local relief 
funds which have an unparalleled reach in the communities, on 
communities of color, low-income communities. And the funds 
need to be flexible in terms of financing options, and must 
include grants.
    And so I would love to hear from the panel on do you agree 
with me that when you are shutting down businesses or limiting 
their hours or other things that are important for us to get 
out of this health crisis, I just really believe flexible funds 
and grants are really important to fill the gap. And I would 
love to hear any feedback or thoughts on that.
    Mr. Zernick. Senator Booker, this is Tom Zernick, and thank 
you for your comments. I wanted to mention that in my testimony 
I mentioned we really need to expand the eligible use proceeds 
under a Round 2 of PPP. While payroll is important, businesses 
need to know they can cover all of their operating costs to 
stay open, and I would encourage all of you, as you look to the 
new COVID relief package next week that we not only address the 
PPP program and making the fixes, the no-cost fixes that we 
talked about, but part of this has to be providing long-term 
capital to businesses that want to relaunch.
    Today, we are looking at 7(a) loans. We are looking at 
dented financial statements. We are looking at companies whose 
profit-and-loss statements are showing tremendous losses. And 
while they project profitability in the next 12 months, those 
are very difficult credit decisions for us to make, and that is 
why we need, in addition to PPP, we need the enhanced SBA 
guarantee, taking it to 90 percent, and waiving the fees for 
these small businesses, and also increasing our authorization 
cap, so we have access to funds to support all these businesses 
that you are talking about.
    And as far as minority lending goes, I am proud to 
announce, just this week, First Home Bank launched a $50 
million minority loan initiative. Ms. Williams, I am going to 
be contacting you, because I think we can help many of your 
clients. But we will open our doors for PPP and 7(a) to all 
minorities, not only in the Tampa Bay area, where we are at, 
but across the country.
    So, Senator Booker, we are interested in expanding use of 
proceeds. We need the resources, including an enhanced 7(a), we 
need Senator Coons' 1112 payment extension, and certainly more 
PPP today with the no-cost fixes I have described in my 
testimony.
    Senator Booker. Thank you very much.
    Ms. McFarland, I understand that you, in addition to 
Federal assistance, your business received aid from Maryland 
and Prince George's County's State and local relief fund. I 
have got a bipartisan proposal called the Relief For Main 
Street Act, that would send $50 billion to states, cities, and 
counties to seed and scale funds like that, that are connected 
to communities, know where the need is.
    And I am just wondering if you could talk a little bit 
about that experience of having a more locally-based fund that 
was able to help get your resources.
    Ms. McFarland. Absolutely. The State and local funding 
initiatives are crucial to our community and small businesses 
around the country. We were fortunate to receive funding from 
both the State and the county level. They were not as 
restrictive so they allowed us to invest in the actual flooring 
to house our basketball facility and allow kids to train there.
    In addition, our local communities often know us best, so 
providing them with resources enables them to support us and 
deploy resources in effective and efficient ways. For example, 
in response to COVID-19, Employ Prince George's and several 
partners launched the Prince George's County COVID-19 Hourly 
Employee Relief Fund, which provides $200 cash cards to PG 
County residents who were recently laid off due to the 
pandemic.
    At the State level, my State set up the Maryland Small 
Business COVID Emergency Relief Fund, which was a $75 million 
fund that offers $50,000 loans to assist Maryland for-profit 
small businesses that have faced disruptive operations during 
COVID, with 0 percent interest due for the first 12 months and 
2 percent for the remaining 36 months. But the fund stopped 
accepting applications in early April, so we are still in need 
of those fundings for the local and State levels. Thank you.
    Senator Booker. Thank you. I want to be respectful. I think 
I am at my time. But I do want to say, Chairman, we have made a 
lot of progress on this Committee about removing the collateral 
consequences for people with prior criminal convictions. We did 
not eliminate them, though, and there are still some, what I 
believe are really unfair exclusions for people with past 
criminal convictions within a year, that have nothing to do 
with their business or business enterprise, nothing to do with 
sort of maybe concerns about their financial reliability or 
what have you.
    And I would still love to work with folks here to try to 
remove those final restrictions as we go to another round, God 
willing, as we go to another round of PPP and potentially EIDL 
loans as well.
    Chairman Rubio. And I think it will be interesting to 
continue to work on that. Are those new glasses? Is that new 
look?
    Senator Booker. You know, man, this is what you call I am 
getting old, my brother. They are called readers for agedly-
impaired.
    Chairman Rubio. I had trouble today for the first time 
seeing the name tags from the distance here, so I may be 
looking to buy those. We will match up.
    Senator Booker. Us Gen Xers, man, we are getting there, 
slowly and surely. We are going to need it more.
    Chairman Rubio. I am going to have to use what Cardin uses. 
Look at how wide and Senatorial they are.
    Senator Booker. I suggest, Chairman, that you shave your 
head before----
    [Laughter.]
    Chairman Rubio. Is that the look? Okay.
    Senator Booker. Yes.
    Chairman Rubio. All right. Why not. It is 2020--what else 
could happen?
    Stay safe. All right.
    We have Senator Hirono and then Senator Rosen.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the 
witnesses. I am glad that we are focusing on how we can improve 
the PPP program and other programs that are specifically 
targeted to help small businesses.
    I just heard Mr. Zernick mention that he would support SBA 
loan guarantee up to 90 percent, which I think right now, Mr. 
Zernick, is at like 70 percent or 75 percent, and that you 
would like an increase of your authorization cap.
    Ms. Williams, I believe that you represent a network of 
small lenders. Would you also support these two suggestions 
that Mr. Zernick made?
    Ms. Williams. Yes, absolutely. We do support raising the 
guarantee on the 7(a) program, and I would also like to say 
that we also support the extension of the Section 1112 CARES 
Act debt relief payments. Like Mr. Zernick said, those were 
incredibly helpful for both borrowers and lenders, to provide a 
little breathing room during this crisis, where borrowers did 
not have to make those payments but lenders were still able to 
receive that income from the SBA. So those have been 
tremendously helpful.
    Senator Hirono. I think some of these provisions are in 
Senator Cardin's HEROES Small Business Lifeline Act. Ms. 
Williams, have you read that proposal, that bill?
    Ms. Williams. Yes.
    Senator Hirono. Mr. Zernick I wonder whether you support 
the provisions of this bill, because I think that it does 
really help the people that you represent. Mr. Zernick?
    Mr. Zernick. Yes, absolutely.
    Senator Hirono. You will support this bill?
    Mr. Zernick. Yes, I absolutely support that, Senator 
Hirono, and I saw it firsthand in the Great Recession of 2009, 
when President Obama's Recovery Act elevated the guarantee to 
90 percent. It also increased the authorization cap and it 
waived the lender and borrower fees. We lent our way through 
recovery through 7(a) loans. Commercial lending stopped, like 
it is now, and borrowers simply had no access to capital, and 
that is the benefit, the power of SBA.
    So I strongly encourage the COVID relief bill that gets 
reviewed next week include not only the PPP, with our no-cost 
fixes, include Senator Coons' 1112 payments, but also include 
an enhanced guarantee, gets the cap rate and the authorization 
we need, and waive the fees for our borrowers.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you very much. I think we are still 
focusing on getting Republican support for the kinds of items 
that you just talked about in the relief negotiations.
    I have been very much focused on helping those businesses 
with fewer than 10 employees. So I would call these smaller 
businesses within the framework of small businesses, so 
businesses with 10 or fewer employees. And we need to make sure 
that these smaller businesses, they do not have the accountants 
and the lawyers to help them navigate through all of the 
requirements for getting a PPP or EIDL or any of those kinds of 
loans, not to mention loan forgiveness.
    So can any of the witnesses elaborate on the particular 
challenges that smaller businesses, as I have described, have 
experienced with PPP, and what can we do specifically to make 
sure that these smaller businesses are able to access these 
programs? This would be for any of the witnesses.
    Mr. Zernick. Senator Hirono, I can tell you that I was 
getting my hair cut this weekend in preparation for this 
hearing today, and my beautician happened to get a small PPP 
loan. And I said, ``How is it going, Kim, on your forgiveness 
process?'' and she said, ``Quite honestly, the application was 
so complex I had to hire an accountant, and I just do not have 
the money to pay for an accountant to help me compile the 
information needed to process her forgiveness.'' That was very 
concerning to me, Senator.
    So I think that as we look at lending money in the smaller 
loan space here, we have to make it non-complex. These people 
do not have CFOs. We have to keep it simple, keep the 
calculations simple. And again, this program can work. In fact, 
of the 9,000 loans we did at First Home Bank in PPP, 6,800 of 
them were less than 10 employees. We were doing loans for $500. 
So again, we have to focus on these truly small businesses, and 
that is really what Main Street is about.
    Senator Hirono. So there must be some specific things we 
can do with regard to how Treasury and SBA and others put out 
their guidance, because if people cannot understand, make it 
out, and you have to actually hire people to help them, that 
does not make much sense.
    So going forward I would really like to have the witnesses 
who have experience with this, if you have very specific ways 
that you can change the kind of language that is used in the 
guidance, the kind of requirements please let us know.
    And, Mr. Chairman, I hope that we can focus on having the 
administration be much more transparent and communicative in 
how they are dealing with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of 
small businesses right now who are trying to get loan 
forgiveness.
    I think my time is up. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and again, 
I thank the witnesses.
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you. Senator Rosen.
    Senator Rosen. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, I really want 
to give you a special shout-out for your leadership over the 
past couple of years. Small businesses are just really in a 
better position because of it. We have worked on a lot of 
things that have really helped my State, and I appreciate 
working with you and your staff always. I also want to thank 
Ranking Member Cardin and Senator Shaheen for their continued 
mentorship and leadership as well. They really have been so 
helpful. Ninety-nine percent of businesses in Nevada are small 
business. This Committee really has helped us get the resources 
that we need at home, particularly in the pandemic.
    But, you know, we are hearing today about the small 
businesses and coronavirus has put millions out of work, 
millions of people out of work. Of course, I am fighting like 
everyone else for a second round of PPP for our struggling 
small businesses, direct support to restaurants, live 
entertainment, help for our hospitality and tourism industry, 
of course, very important in Nevada. It is the backbone of our 
economy.
    It is why I just introduced, along with Senator Cornyn, 
legislation to provide direct relief to all of our small 
businesses, the EIDL for Small Businesses Act. This bipartisan 
legislation would lift the SBA's cap on both EIDL loans and the 
EIDL advance grants that we have been talking about. So it 
would provide all eligible small businesses with loans up to $2 
million, and the full $10,000 grants regardless of size, and it 
would replenish the EIDL and the EIDL advance accounts by $180 
billion. And as everyone has been discussing, EIDL and PPP have 
really worked together to take care of our businesses. We need 
more flexibility with the PPP, and I hope that we are going to 
continue to do that.
    But Ms. McFarland, I know that your business, you received 
EIDL funding early on, before the SBA put on these arbitrary 
caps that we are trying to lift. So can you just speak briefly, 
if your business had not received the full EIDL loan that you 
were eligible for, $490,000, and instead only received 
$150,000, how would it have affected your business if you had 
these caps placed on you?
    Ms. McFarland. I would be sitting here today telling a much 
darker story had we been capped at that $150K. Because we did 
not have that cap we were able to produce a dream that my 
parents and I put together to not only allow our business to 
survive but allow our community to also thrive. Those funds 
were crucial in the rehiring of our staff, the paying of our 
rent. Our rent alone is $36,000, and we had a gracious landlord 
that allowed us to reduce our rent during the summer. That 
extension ended around October. And so those funds were also 
able to cover those expenses as well.
    But all of those funds were exhausted at the end of 
October, and so I implore Congress to provide an influx of 
funding as soon as possible so that we can continue to be of 
service to our community and our employees.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you. I want to follow-up a little bit 
on that, because we need to be sure, when we support all of our 
businesses, that consumer confidence, people feel safe going 
back indoors, to a restaurant, to a venue, to a hotel, casino, 
wherever it is, movie theater, whatever it is you are doing.
    And so I want to be sure that we provide businesses with 
funding for not just the PPE technologies but other 
technologies that might make our indoor spaces more safe, like 
increased ventilation, tax credits for that, upgrading your 
HVAC and some of those things.
    So have you incorporated any systems like that, or how 
would that help you if we were able to give you support to 
upgrade your ventilation system so people might feel more 
confident about the air they are breathing indoors?
    Ms. McFarland. Absolutely. Our main priority is the safety 
and health of our customers, the kids that come through our 
doors, our employees, my parents. And so we have already taken 
the sacrifice to invest in expensive technology and equipment 
to ensure the safety of the participants that come through our 
facility. We have hired another small business to come in and 
clean our facility 10 hours a day. They clean and sanitize 
between uses of the basketball facility.
    We have also updated our HVAC system, which was a large 
expense, but we knew we had to commit to that, because we are 
committing to our community wholeheartedly. So having funding 
to help us continue to invest in those safety precautions would 
be incredible.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you. I appreciate everything you are 
doing and hopefully they are going to provide some form of help 
to allow businesses to upgrade, to make all of the spaces safe 
going forward.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you. Senator Hawley.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for 
holding this hearing. Thanks to the witnesses for being here.
    I want to start by acknowledging that the PPP program has 
been a vital lifeline to small businesses in my State of 
Missouri. It has saved probably countless jobs. I mean, 
hopefully we will know the number at some point, and it will 
be, I am sure, a very high number indeed. But it has been a 
vital, vital program, and it has enjoyed broad bipartisan 
support.
    However, I think it is worth knowing, we have to note, that 
despite the supposedly broad bipartisan support, we still have 
not been able to get the program renewed. We still have not 
been able to get consensus, to actually bring to the floor, 
have a debate, and vote on a bill that would supply additional 
funding to renew this program at a vital time. And we see just 
from today's unemployment numbers that unemployment claims are 
once again on the rise. This can only be described as a failure 
of the Senate and of this Congress to take action at this vital 
time. So I want to underscore again that it is time to give 
this program another lease on life, to make sure that we get 
small businesses the help that they need.
    I also want to raise one other issue, one other problem 
with the program that we have seen in my State, at least, and 
that is the changing terms on the loan issuance at the front 
end and then also the loan forgiveness. In particular, now the 
SBA has recently announced that it is going to mandate that 
borrowers that receive loans of more than $2 million complete a 
detailed Loan Necessity Questionnaire that describes their 
operations and financial conditions during the pandemic.
    Now I just want to raise one set of concerns with this and 
with that questionnaire as it has been written, as it relates 
to churches. Now I want to be clear--I am all for making sure 
that for-profit organizations, like the Lakers, for instance, 
that I think applied for initially and tried to get a PPP 
loan--I mean, give me a break. For-profit institutions 
absolutely--first of all, no institution should be getting the 
loans that do not need them. Second, for-profit institutions 
should be subjected to rigorous scrutiny here, and perhaps many 
nonprofits as well.
    My concern with the way the questionnaire is written is as 
it applies to churches, churches now are being asked to 
disclose all manner of information under this draft 
questionnaire that they had no ability to anticipate when they 
applied for the loan. And can I just say, it was very difficult 
for quite a few churches in my home State to get loans 
initially because the SBA wrongly informed local lenders, for 
the first approximately week of this program, that churches 
were not eligible.
    So after all of that difficulty in applying for the loans, 
now churches are told, ``Oh, wait a minute. Actually, we are 
changing the terms and the forgiveness program, and we want 
lots more information, in fact, different information than we 
told you initially we would ask for, and if you do not give it 
to us, maybe we just will not forgive your loan after all.''
    I do submit to you, Mr. Chairman, that that is simply not 
fair as it relates to these organizations, these nonprofits 
that are, by definition, of course, religious institutions, 
nonprofits.
    And so I have written to the SBA about this. I want to 
express my concerns about that questionnaire as it applies to 
religious nonprofits, to churches on the record, and I hope 
this is still a draft questionnaire and it has not yet been 
sent out. But I just want to make it clear that I have major 
concerns with how this will be applied and how it will affect 
the religious institutions who, frankly, have had a more 
difficult time under this program than they should have.
    Mr. Zernick, in the time that I have remaining here let me 
just ask you, start at least, with a question about how this 
program, in your experience processing loans under this 
program, has gone for urban and rural areas. My state, again, 
the State of Missouri, is actually a majority rural and ex-
urban. The rural areas predominate. I imagine that your 
institutions have processed loans for small businesses in both, 
in both urban and rural areas. Can you give us a sense of what 
your experience has been in assisting borrowers in the two 
different regions, and have rural borrowers been able to get 
access to the program successfully?
    Mr. Zernick. Sure, Senator. Let me start by saying last 
year First Home Bank was a top 10 SBA lender in the country. We 
are a preferred lender. We lend actually in all 50 states, 
including your fine State. We lend in the rural markets. We 
lend in the large metropolitan statistical areas. We do not 
have any geography restrictions. When we did the PPP program, 
we opened our doors to businesses across the country. And while 
about a third of our loans were done in our home state here in 
Florida, two-thirds of our loans were done across America, 
including the rural communities.
    So we are very proud of that, and as we position ourselves 
for Round 2 PPP, we will continue to open our doors to First 
Home Bank customers and non-First Home Bank customers, and I 
assure you, we will be lending in the rural communities as 
well, like we did in Round 1.
    Senator Hawley. Ms. Williams, can I just give you an 
opportunity briefly to comment, and ask you if you have any 
perspective on this?
    Ms. Williams. Absolutely. There are many CDFIs that are 
focused on meeting the credit needs of their rural communities, 
and PPP was no exception to that. So there are some lenders 
who, you know, of course served their existing customer base 
with PPP loans first but then opened their doors to other small 
businesses and nonprofits who needed access to capital.
    And I think the virtual nature of how we are operating 
during the pandemic actually made it a little bit easier to 
reach some of these rural customers through online means, to 
help them apply for PPP loans, than we might have seen if it 
was a more sort of--based on a physical, in-person process. So 
CDFIs are always looking for ways to expand their footprint, to 
provide more access to capital in our rural communities.
    Senator Hawley. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman. I will have some additional questions for the other 
witnesses for the record, but my time has expired. Thanks, Mr. 
Chairman.
    Chairman Rubio. Thank you. Do we have anyone else on?
    Senator Cardin, did you have any follow-up questions?
    Senator Cardin. I just really want to thank this panel, and 
I think this has been one of our most informative hearings. You 
have really given us a lot of really good suggestions, moving 
forward. I think it is very timely, because we do hope that we 
are going to be able to act on a COVID package before we 
adjourn for the holidays. And I think we have gotten some 
valuable help through all four of the panelists, so thank you 
very much for your input, and I can assure you that we took 
notes and we are going to use this information moving forward, 
to try to do the right thing for small businesses.
    Chairman Rubio. Great. Thank you. We were waiting for 
Senator Young but he is not back on the WebEx. He is on? 
Senator Young, are you there?
    Let me give him a few seconds. I do not want to hold the 
witnesses up any longer, but he was on earlier.
    There he is.
    Senator Young. My apologies. Thank you, Chairman. We had 
some technical challenges. Can you hear me okay?
    Chairman Rubio. We can hear you perfectly.
    Senator Young. All right. Well, I thank the witnesses so 
much for being before the Committee today, and I commend 
Chairman Rubio for his leadership on small business issues 
throughout this pandemic. The Debt Protection Program has been 
highly successful helping small businesses, and by extension, 
their employees weather this pandemic. I am glad we are here 
today to discuss extending the program and also to assess ways 
we might improve it.
    According to the 2020 Indiana Manufacturing Survey, 44 
percent of respondents cited the PPP as the primary reason for 
their survive. Still, nine months after many of the government-
mandated closures first went into place, we are seeing small to 
mid-sized businesses struggling to make ends meet, placing more 
jobs at risk.
    As one example, Tyler Truss Systems in Pendleton, Indiana, 
has been a leading truss manufacturer to the live events 
industry. They received a PPP loan in May that enabled them to 
keep their 72 employees on the payroll. But as the pandemic has 
continued and the live events industry remains largely 
shuttered, Tyler Truss has seen a significant decline in sales, 
with an 87 percent drop in the third quarter of this year. The 
company is now down to less than 20 employees, and without 
additional relief they will continue to struggle.
    For several months I have been pushing for additional small 
business relief, including my RESTART Act with Senator Michael 
Bennet, and I would like to thank Chairman Rubio for working 
with me and my staff on including some of the principles from 
RESTART, like the revenue decline threshold and expansion of 
forgivable expenses, in the PPP second draw proposal. Given the 
progress in negotiations these past few weeks, I hope we can 
come together and pass more relief in short order.
    With millions of businesses still facing financial 
uncertainty, my RESTART Act would address the concerns heard 
from across the country, where businesses were restricted from 
relief programs, including businesses in manufacturing, 
hospitality, travel, recreation, and entertainment. The RESTART 
proposal would target our limited resources to the hardest-hit 
businesses, including those over 500 employees, by offering 
partial loan forgiveness based on revenue decline.
    Additionally, it would provide flexible loans to help 
employers with a broad set of operating expenses, instead of a 
focus on payroll costs. This is especially important for those 
who cannot maintain full payrolls due to significant and 
sustained loss in revenues.
    I should note that the RESTART Act currently has 59 
bipartisan co-sponsors in the United States Senate.
    For Mr. Holtz-Eakin, in your testimony you indicated one of 
the most effective reforms would be to change PPP's focus from 
payroll to revenue replacement, similar to what my RESTART Act 
would do. Can you kindly elaborate on the importance of this 
possible reform and its benefit for a recovering economy?
    Mr. Holtz-Eakin. Certainly, Senator. As I noted earlier, 
the economic problem that the PPP addressed was large cash flow 
crunch, generated by the virus itself, and the fear people had 
to engage in commerce and thus risk infection or transmission 
of the disease. So when the customers disappeared, the revenue 
disappeared, and the mechanical replacement of the revenue 
would address that business model problem.
    The difficulty you face is that it is much more expensive 
and targeting a much smaller part of the cost base of the 
business, but economically it is far more effective.
    Senator Young. Thank you so much. I have one additional 
question for you, if the Chairman will indulge me. It pertains 
to seasonal employment.
    We have a business in Indiana that I would like to cite as 
an example: Holiday World and Splashin' Safari. It is fourth-
generation, well-known, family-owned theme park located in the 
southern part of my state. And historically, Holiday World has 
earned 99 percent of its revenue between the months of May and 
October.
    However, like most seasonal businesses, Holiday World was 
unable to open until June, and ended the season early, in 
September. I am told that Holiday World experienced a 66 
percent year-over-year revenue loss in 2020.
    Unfortunately, the amusement park did not qualify for an 
original PPP loan because it exceeded the full-time employee 
threshold. However, I am hopeful that PPP second draw program 
will incorporate a new seasonal employee definition that takes 
into account the unique fluctuations for these types of 
businesses.
    Again, for Mr. Holtz-Eakin, are there any additional PPP 
improvements you think Congress should consider to ensure small 
businesses receive the relief they need, especially any changes 
related to seasonal businesses?
    Mr. Holtz-Eakin. Senator, I have not given any specific 
thought to seasonal businesses, but I think the rule of thumb 
should be to spread it over the full year and see if it 
qualifies for the program, and my expectation is that it would, 
under those circumstances. So that is a modification we might 
think about, going forward.
    Senator Young. Very good. Thank you so much to all of our 
witnesses, and to Mr. Holtz-Eakin for answering my questions, 
and I yield back to the Chairman.
    Chairman Rubio. All right. Well, I want to thank all of the 
witnesses for participating here today, all the members who 
attended this hybrid hearing, and I just appreciate the time 
you have given us as well. I know it has been in excess of the 
two hours, but I hope you sensed from the questions and the 
members' interest how important this is to everybody.
    Just as a technical note here for a business item on the 
Committee, the hearing record will remain open for one week 
instead of the usual two because of the end of the year and so 
forth. So if any members have any statements or questions for 
the record we ask that they submit it by Thursday, December 
17th, which is a week from today, at 5 p.m.
    So with that thank you to everybody, and with that the 
hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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