[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 85 (Wednesday, May 6, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2272-S2275]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               CARES ACT

  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I take this time to go over with my 
colleagues the status of where we are in regard to the provisions in 
the CARES Act that relate to small businesses.
  First, I want to make it clear that our top priority for America's 
businesses, whether they be small businesses or large businesses, is to 
get this COVID-19 behind us, to stop the spread of this deadly disease, 
and to give confidence back to the American people that it is safe to 
pursue their economic desires and therefore to have businesses be able 
to go back to a situation where they have customers and they can be 
open for business. We have appropriated significant resources in order 
to make sure we do what is right financially to deal with this deadly 
disease, and we have provided the tools to protect our economy.
  Let me talk a little bit about the attention to small business. I am 
pleased and proud to be the ranking Democrat on the Small Business and 
Entrepreneurship Committee. I serve with Senator Rubio, who is the 
chairman of the committee. We have worked together, Democrats and 
Republicans, in order to help small businesses during this pandemic. We 
did that because we understand that small businesses do not have the 
same degree of financial resiliency that larger companies have. When 
they are going through an emergency situation, when they are going 
through a pandemic, they don't have the same capacity to get credit and 
to get the cash they need that larger companies have.
  We also understand that small business is where the job creation 
mostly will take place in our country. Most jobs are created through 
smaller companies. We also understand that smaller companies are more 
innovative. They come up with new and creative ways in order to build 
our economy. But we recognized that we had to do something to make sure 
they could survive through the pandemic, and that is where the CARES 
Act came in.
  On a bipartisan basis, we crafted new tools under the Small Business 
Administration to help small businesses. I was proud to work with 
Senator Rubio, Senator Shaheen, and Senator Collins. The four of us got 
together well before the CARES Act was brought to the floor of the U.S. 
Senate in order to deal with what is necessary to keep small businesses 
afloat during the pandemic. New tools were created, and the CARES Act 
enacted tools that can help small businesses survive this pandemic.
  The program that is getting the most attention is the Paycheck 
Protection Program, the PPP program. In the original CARES Act, we 
authorized and appropriated $349 billion for that program, and then we 
replenished in a second round an additional $310 billion, for a total 
of $659 billion for the PPP program.
  It is a program in which small businesses go to their financial 
institution and take out a 7(a) loan, which is a loan that is provided 
for under the Small Business Act, but there are private lenders that 
lend the money to the small businesses. But we made special provisions 
in this law to provide 100 percent Federal guarantee so that there is 
no risk to the borrower. We made it easier for companies to be able to 
get those 7(a) loans and provided additional lenders for other 
communities. We expanded the 7(a) program to include not only 
conventional, for-profit small businesses but also nonprofit 
businesses, as well as individual proprietors.
  To date, the program has been very successful. Over 4 million 7(a) 
loans have been made under the Paycheck Protection Program. But we have 
concerns. Let me talk a little bit about the concerns we have.
  One of our concerns is that it has been difficult for the underserved 
community, the underbanked community, to be able to get these 7(a) 
loans as a priority. We failed them in the first round. It was the 
larger companies that had established relationships with their banks 
that got priority on the processing of these loans, so that minority 
businesses, women-owned businesses, businesses located in rural 
communities, and veteran-owned businesses did not receive the same 
attention as the larger businesses did.
  So our first priority is to find out exactly how the program is 
working. We need to get the data. We need to know where these loans 
were made. We need to know what industries got the different loans. We 
need to know the location of these loans. We need to know the size by 
dollar value and by number of employees.
  We also need to know how the different provisions of the PPP program 
have been allocated by loans. For example, we made exceptions on the 
500-employee limit for those companies that come under the NAICS code 
72--this is our hospitality industry--and for good reason: They are 
really hurting during this time.
  We need to know how many hotels and how many restaurants qualified 
under the NAICS code exception. We need to know how many franchisees 
have been able to get loans. We need to know how much went to the 
nonprofit community and how much went to the self-employed community. 
For that reason, I have introduced legislation with Senator Shaheen and 
Senator Schumer to require the SBA to make

[[Page S2273]]

that information available to us on a very regular basis. We need to 
get that information in order to properly carry out our oversight 
function.
  Today, the Small Business Committee in the Senate had a briefing with 
Secretary Mnuchin and Administrator Carranza, and we talked about one 
of the problems we have in administering this law. There is a self-
certification; that is, the business makes the certification that they 
meet the standards and need under the act. We are concerned that there 
may have been abuses. But until we see the information, it is difficult 
for us to do our respective oversight.
  We don't know if we still have adequate funding. To date, there has 
been somewhere around--over $500 billion, closer to $600 billion has 
already been lent out; $550-some billion has already been lent out 
under this program. Are we going to need more money? Until we get this 
information, we don't know what the future funding needs are going to 
be. So we need to be able to get that information so we can provide 
adequate resources.
  I must tell you that I think every Member of the Senate has been 
approached with ways this program can be made better. There are 
questions as to why certain groups are eligible and others are not. 
There is going to be a need for modification in this program, and it 
will be difficult for us to make those modifications unless we get the 
data we need to understand where the loans have been made.
  There is a second program that was created under the CARES Act and 
expanded under the CARES Act, and that is the EIDL Program, the 
Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, and we added a grant program to 
that. The initial CARES Act provided $10 billion. When we went through 
the second round of funding, we put another $60 billion into this 
program. Why did we do that? Because the loan program under EIDL, which 
is an emergency program for businesses that have suffered disasters, 
and COVID-19 qualifies as that, gives relief beyond just the 8 weeks of 
payroll and the other expenses covered under the PPP program. So small 
businesses need help with working capital. They can get that help under 
the EIDL Loan Program. A small business might need an immediate influx 
of cash. They can get that under the grant program under EIDL, up to 
$10,000.
  Yes, when the programs were announced, they were overprescribed. We 
had over 1 million small businesses make immediate applications for 
these funds, and the Small Business Administration was overwhelmed. 
That is why we provided, in addition to the original $10 billion for 
the grant program, another $10 billion. And in addition to the loaning 
capacity, we put another $50 billion into that program so they could 
execute $300 billion worth of loans.
  But it has been very slow at the SBA, which is a concern of ours. 
Only about 50,000 loans have been successfully processed under EIDL. We 
just got that information today. Yes, there have been over 1 million 
grants given out. Most of them have been under $10,000, whereas the 
maximum we thought most small businesses would get is a $10,000 grant.
  There needs to be better coordination between the PPP program and the 
EIDL Program, and we must make sure that the window remains open. But, 
today, a non-agricultural business that applies for an EIDL loan is 
told that they can't process that loan, that the window is basically 
closed. That is not the intent of Congress. We want to make sure those 
windows are open.
  So I come here today to tell you that the first priority is that we 
need to get the facts, and we need to fix the program to make sure it 
works well. But I want to qualify that by saying how proud we are of 
the men and women at the SBA and Treasury. They are implementing this 
new program literally overnight and working 24 hours a day in order to 
make sure this program can work. We recognize that, and we recognize 
this is a major challenge, but we need to make sure the program works 
right.
  We need oversight and accountability, and we can't do that oversight 
and accountability unless we get all of the facts and unless we get the 
information. Those who abuse the program need to be held accountable. I 
was pleased to hear Secretary Mnuchin talk about that today in the 
briefing to our committee. We have to have oversight as to the program 
working efficiently. We also have to make sure that we take care of the 
problems that we have seen in the program with the underserved 
community. We can do a better job in reaching those businesses that are 
traditionally underserved.

  We specifically allocated $60 billion of PPP to smaller financial 
institutions. We now need to make sure they really get to the 
institutions that can serve minority small businesses, that can serve 
those smaller of the small businesses, that can serve women-owned 
businesses and veteran-owned businesses and businesses located in rural 
communities.
  I would suggest that we need to make sure that the CDFIs and minority 
depository institutions get their fair share of allocations under the 
PPP program in order to reach these hard-to-serve small businesses.
  Yes, we do need to look at how we can modify the program to make it 
work even better. We recognize that when we crafted the program, we 
thought that 8 weeks would be enough. We now know that our economy in 
most of the country is not going to be up and running within that 8-
week period. How do we improve that program?
  I want to tell you that we all recognize that the Paycheck Protection 
Program may not be enough. Even in conjunction with the EIDL program, 
it may not be enough because businesses are not returning to normal 
within the next few weeks. We need to design a program that provides 
the next level of relief to those small businesses that really need it, 
those that have had significant revenue losses, those small businesses 
that are really small businesses, like the mom-and-pop-type businesses, 
and, yes, those small businesses that have traditionally been left 
out--the minority-owned businesses, and women-owned businesses, and 
businesses in smaller, rural communities, and veteran-owned businesses.
  The success of the PPP program and the success of the EIDL program 
were because Democrats and Republicans worked together in a strong 
bipartisan manner. We are continuing to do that in the Small Business 
Committee.
  I applaud our leader, Senator Rubio, for reaching out to work 
together between Democrats and Republicans. We need to continue to work 
together and enact the type of oversight that is necessary for the 
programs that are currently existing and make the modifications so 
these programs can work effectively and well.
  We heard today about the inflexibility of the 8-week period and how 
we need to deal with that. We need to work together to improve the 
program and to make sure that the next level of help for small 
businesses is targeted to those small businesses that really need the 
help so that we can continue to have an economy that can grow, that can 
create jobs, that can be innovative, and that protects the ability of 
small business owners to be able to participate in our economy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, let me first of all join with my good 
friend, Senator Cardin, in appreciating the incredible work that really 
so many Federal employees have done to make these programs work.
  I was with the SBA Director about 2 weeks ago on Friday. She said 
that in the first 14 days of the PPP program they did 14 months of 
loans in that 14-day period. I thought many times that Secretary 
Mnuchin set these high standards for how quickly we would get to each 
of these points and probably only later realized just how difficult it 
is to get the Federal Government to move.
  In this case, the Federal Government has moved. The Congress has 
moved working together. We didn't have the element of time on our side. 
We really had to move quickly. I think we all knew when we were doing 
so that we were going to have some miscalculations, whether it was the 
amount of money for PPP or a program that wasn't quite as refined as it 
needed to be. And, hopefully, we are right now trying to look at not 
only how we have filled in the blanks on the programs that we so 
quickly dealt with in March, but also to look forward to May and July 
and try to figure out what the

[[Page S2274]]

economy is going to need and where we are going to be in this 
healthcare crisis in May and July.
  Certainly, a number of our States are beginning to reopen. States 
like Missouri are opening in what I think is exactly the appropriate 
way. The Governor looked at the whole State and said: We are going to 
step back from our initial order in the entire State. We are going to 
remove that order. He has worked thoughtfully and carefully with the 
mayor of St. Louis and the mayor of Kansas City, the county executives 
of bigger counties, and the mayors of Columbia and Springfield, and he 
has not gotten into fights with local officials about situations where 
they have every reason to know more than he does, just like the 
Governor of Missouri has every reason to know more than somebody in 
Washington, DC, about when our State should reopen
  I am glad the President has let Governors have that sort of 
authority. I think in most States, including mine, Governors have 
stepped back and let local officials assert their view of what should 
happen in the area where they have been elected to be responsible. With 
that combination of things, we are going to reopen and begin to see the 
economy reconnect again like it has not connected for the last couple 
of months.
  At the same time, we have these two fights. One is to save the 
economy and one is this important fight against the virus. I think in 
the 2 months since we went home after the CARES Act, I spent most of my 
time working on the healthcare side of this. Senator Alexander is the 
authorizing chairman for these healthcare programs. I am the 
appropriating chairman for most of them. These are programs that, 
certainly, in the last months, Americans have learned a lot more about 
than they ever knew about before. Who knew the Centers for Disease 
Control, or the CDC, was doing what it was doing or that Health and 
Human Services has the responsibility they have or how troublesome it 
was if we let our hospitals get out of whack in terms of income and 
continuing expenses? All of those things happen.
  One of the things I worked hard on has been to get that research 
funding at the National Institutes of Health, where Dr. Fauci runs only 
one of the double handful of agencies at NIH, the infectious disease 
part of that.
  The American people are beginning to see those things that the 
government does and also see that the government, like every other 
family or every other institution, doesn't respond to crisis with 
immediate efficiency, but does begin to work its way toward a solution. 
Senator Alexander and I have spent a lot of time together with FDA and 
all those other agencies. What we see happening is a real willingness 
with the total backing of the Congress to get out there and try to move 
these solutions at a faster rate than we ever have before. Dr. Fauci 
said early on that if we developed a vaccine in 18 months, that would 
be the world record for a U.S.-developed vaccine from a new virus to 
having a vaccine available.
  We are trying to do everything we can, not only to meet that 
potential world record but to beat that world record. How are we doing 
that? We are doing that with things like the shark tank concept at NIH, 
which we specifically put $1 billion behind in the last bill--$1 
billion for a place where people would bring ideas for a vaccine, for 
therapy, for testing, and you would have that shark tank environment 
begin to evaluate which of those ideas deserve the help of the Federal 
Government to push them forward faster.
  How would we push them forward faster? Obviously, a vaccine is what 
we need to fully emerge, in my view, from this. We need therapies to 
deal with people who get the virus before we have the vaccine and 
testing to know if you had it or not. Hopefully, we would have some 
level of immunity or testing to know whether you have it. We have to do 
better on all of those fronts.
  We need tests that are easier to take and get a quick response. We 
need millions of these tests that millions of Americans will take more 
than once. If you are at a factory, if you are in a close situation, or 
if you are on a college campus, the administrator or the boss or you 
may decide: I want to take that test every week, and I want to call my 
mother every week from this college campus and tell her I have taken 
the test again like I told you I would. I was OK last week. I am still 
feeling OK. Nobody in my dorm is sick. It is OK that I am here.
  That is the kind of thing that will get us started. How do we get to 
that quick, easy response test? How do we get to that therapy, and how 
would the shark tank work?
  People bring in ideas. Let's assume on testing that the shark tank 
decides there are really 10 of these that have real potential to work 
and we are going to begin to advance them. Then, at some point, there 
are four of them that are still one or two steps away from being fully 
vetted, but you don't want to wait until they are fully vetted to go 
into production. That is where another billion dollars in an agency 
called BARDA is. Take that billion dollars and find a private partner 
and say that we are going to produce all four of these tests. We are 
going to have all four of these tests ready 30 days from now when we 
know which one works because 30 days really matters--30 days in getting 
back to school, 30 days in generating the economy. If you are 30 days 
ahead of where you would have been otherwise, you can put a lot of 
money behind that and still pay only a fraction of what we have been 
putting behind trying to stabilize the economy. If two of them work in 
that 30-day period of time when you are going ahead and manufacturing 
all four of them, they are just ready quicker than they would have been 
otherwise.
  We hear often the idea that failure is not an option. This is a case 
where actually failure is almost a certainty on some of the things you 
are trying. If you are not failing, you are not trying enough things. 
If all you did was advance four things that were going to work anyway, 
you really didn't take much of a chance to fast forward or dual-track 
what you are trying to do.

  We are working hard to get ready to have those tests so when you have 
a normal blood draw to check your cholesterol, when you turn that into 
your doctor, you could ask your doctor to also check for COVID-19 if 
they don't ask you if you want to check for COVID-19. They could say 
you have it.
  Hopefully, by the time that test is available, they can say you have 
it and you have enough of the antibodies or you have enough of what it 
took to fight this off that you should have immunity up until the time 
we are likely to have a vaccine. Many Americans then know they are out 
there with no danger to themselves or no danger to others. Many 
Americans then know that, in all likelihood, they can safely visit 
somebody they haven't been visiting for a while because they didn't 
want to take a chance of carrying a virus that now they know they can't 
possibly get. So those kinds of things will make a real difference in 
our economy.
  On therapeutics, if we don't have the vaccine for it yet and if you 
get the disease, we need to find and fast forward the manufacturer of 
the therapeutics that we think are most likely to work.
  It is the same with vaccines. On all those fronts, we are making 
headway. I think we are probably testing sophisticated testing for the 
antibodies and for a diagnostic test. We are having lots of interest in 
that. There is a lot of private sector interest for an antibody test, 
for this coronavirus test, where particularly, if scientists can say 
that you have it and you have this level of antibody that you can't get 
it again. Who wouldn't want to take that test?
  The authorizing chairman of the Appropriating Committee, Senator 
Shelby, Senator Alexander, Senator Murray, and I all believe that the 
government should pay for that test. We have said the government should 
pay for that test if your insurance company will not. Most insurance 
companies said they would pay for that test. It seems to me that if you 
have millions of customers and a guaranteed payer, this is one that the 
private sector is quickly about to take care of on their own. Thank 
goodness for that. This is one of those times when the most 
sophisticated pharmaceutical-medical science laboratory system in the 
world begins to pay off. That is what we are going to see here.
  We have other areas where companies are working together like they 
haven't before. I know they told our friends at

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the National Institutes of Health that if we can test their experiment 
better at our facility than they can, bring it over here to test it 
over here. We need an all-out effort to get this economy going again. 
We need an all-out effort to get people's health secure. Once that has 
happened, I think we will see all those things come together.
  I think we made great strides. I haven't heard anybody say in some 
time on this issue that Congress just hasn't provided enough resources 
to do this job on the testing, therapeutics, and the medical device 
side of this or the personal protective equipment side of this. People 
looked at what the Congress has stepped up and done and said the 
Congress has given us the tools.
  The administration, the research of scientists of America, American 
pharmaceutical companies, and the medical companies have to step in. I 
believe they are stepping in. Let's break some records here. Let's do 
some things quicker with the same amount of safety that we have done in 
the past. There is a dynamic need to do this. The American people 
understand why it needs to be done. People all over the world will 
benefit from our leadership here. I think we are seeing it.
  Hopefully, we can continue on these efforts to have the bipartisan 
determination to win these two fights: the fight against the virus and 
the fight for the economy that the American people deserve.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, before our colleague and friend from 
Missouri leaves the floor, I want to thank him for a very thoughtful 
presentation. I want to thank him for that and for his leadership. I 
know he has other places to go. I am glad I was here to hear that.
  I wasn't sure if I would continue wearing my mask. I saw the 
Presiding Officer was wearing theirs and I said: Well, I will keep 
wearing mine, too. All our staff on the floor, including one of the 
staff who takes down our words for the Congressional Record and folks 
who accept documents at the desk in front of us are all wearing masks. 
I was wearing a mask earlier today going into a markup at a business 
meeting in the Environment and Public Works Committee. They were also 
wearing masks.
  As I was about to go into the business meeting, there was a Capitol 
police officer there. I said to her: How are you doing today?
  She said: I am doing fine.
  I said: Any idea how many of our Capitol police officers have been 
infected and developed symptoms or had the virus at some point in 
recent weeks?
  She said: I believe it is somewhere between 15 and 20.
  This came as a surprise to me. We haven't heard that much about it. I 
have been here to vote several times this afternoon. I was coming here 
to say a few words about legislation we passed unanimously out of the 
Environment and Public Works Committee. I was passing a number of 
Capitol police officers, people who clean the building, maintain the 
building, and folks who serve food in the cafeteria so that the people 
who are working here have something to eat. They were almost without 
exception wearing masks.
  The reason why it is important for us to do that is because they are 
at risk. We, as leaders, need to exhibit and lead by our example. I 
know my colleagues endeavor to do that. It is important. These are 
people who serve our country just as we do. They deserve not just our 
respect and our thanks, but they deserve our protection. For everybody 
for whom maybe it is something they are uncomfortable doing, not used 
to doing, like hand sanitizing, washing their hands every other hour or 
even more, these are good things, not just for us but for the people 
who are serving this country here with us in our Nation's Capital.
  I did come here today to say those words from my heart, and I wanted 
to share them with you and others.

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