[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 95 (Wednesday, May 20, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2533-S2535]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Small Business Administration

  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I think each person in this body 
recognizes the importance of small business to our economy and to our 
way of life. Small businesses are called the job creator in our 
economy. They create more jobs than larger companies. They provide 
innovative ways in order to move forward on our economy. They can 
figure out better ways to do things more efficiently, meeting the needs 
of the people of our community.
  They are also more vulnerable. They don't have access to the type of 
capital that larger companies have. They don't have the resiliency. So 
when COVID-19 struck, we recognized--those of us in the Senate and the 
House recognized that we had to take special effort to protect the 
economic viability of the small businesses in our country. They did not 
have the reserve capital and they did not have the resiliency to deal 
with this prolonged downturn in our economy.

[[Page S2534]]

  Eight weeks ago, we came together, Democrats and Republicans, by a 
96-to-0 vote and passed the CARES Act. I was proud that a significant 
part of the CARES Act responded to the needs of small businesses.
  We had a working group, a bipartisan working group. Senator Rubio, 
the chairman of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee--I am 
the ranking Democrat--we were joined by Senator Shaheen and Senator 
Collins, and we worked in an expedited way in order to see what we 
could do to help small businesses get through COVID-19.
  The CARES Act provides new opportunities for us to help small 
businesses during this unprecedented disaster. We passed the PPP 
program, the Paycheck Protection Program, and provided $660 billion of 
help for America's small businesses.
  I want to compliment the men and women at the Small Business 
Administration and at Treasury for putting this program together 
literally overnight, and today 4.3 million loans have been given under 
this program that didn't exist just 8 weeks ago.
  There are $513 billion in loans under the Paycheck Protection 
Program. That is quite an accomplishment, but there are challenges. 
There are challenges with any new program, but this program has major 
concerns. When we passed the program, we thought that 8 weeks later, 
our economy would be performing at a much higher level than it is 
today. We need to revisit that.
  A second program that we modified and changed was the Economic Injury 
Disaster Loan Program. We provided an additional $50 billion of funds 
for the EIDL loans so that the Small Business Administration, which 
makes direct loans, could provide $360 billion of additional loans to 
small businesses.
  The EIDL Program works with the PPP program. The PPP program covers 
payroll for 8 weeks, plus some additional expenses. The EIDL Program 
provides working capital so small businesses that have been impacted by 
COVID-19 can stay afloat.
  Here, the results are nowhere near as promising. Only 252,000 loans 
have been issued under the EIDL loan program for under $25 billion. As 
I pointed out earlier, they have the capacity for $360 billion. It has 
been very slow at the SBA in issuing EIDL loans.
  Then we provided for grants under the EIDL Program. Initially, we 
provided $10 billion, and we increased that to $20 billion. Yet the 
number of loans that have been issues or grants that have been issued 
under EIDL--a little over a million--a little over $10 billion. But 
this program has not operated as we intended. We wanted these grants to 
be given within 3 days--we put that in the statute--and we certainly 
didn't expect that the average loan would be between $4,000 and $5,000 
when we gave grants up to $10,000. So challenges exist on both the loan 
and grant program under EIDL.
  Then we provided debt relief for those who have micro-loans or 7(a) 
loans or 504 loans under the SBA--6 months of relief--and, quite 
frankly, we don't know a lot about how that program has been working. 
We don't have much information about it.
  That is what we did 8 weeks ago and then supplemented it with some 
additional funds. What should we do now? The Senate has not finished 
its work as it relates to helping the small businesses of America. We 
still have work we need to do.
  First and foremost, we need to have transparency and data related to 
how these programs are working. Expediency does not excuse transparency 
and accountability. Yes, we wanted to get the money out quickly, and we 
got the money out quickly under the PPP program. That was our desire. 
But we need to have transparency, and we need to have accountability.
  We need to get the geographical information, including how many loans 
can be given in the traditionally underserved communities--minority 
businesses, women-owned businesses, veteran-owned businesses, the rural 
community, and the smaller of the small businesses. We need to get 
information by the size of the business, the number of employees they 
have, the industries, and the lender types. We need to get the numbers 
on how much has gone to the nonprofit community and to affiliates and 
those under the NIC code exception.
  All that is information we need to have in order to carry out our 
responsibilities in the Senate. And, yes, we need to get information 
from the Small Business Administration and from Treasury so that we can 
properly prepare for additional resources that may be needed in order 
to fund these programs.
  This is not a new request that I have made. On April 17, I joined 
with Senator Schumer, Senator Shaheen, and Senator Wyden in a letter to 
Secretary Mnuchin and Administrator Carranza asking for this 
information to be made available on a regular basis. To date, we have 
still not gotten that detailed information.
  So I filed legislation in order to mandate that that data be 
provided, much of that on a daily basis. We tried to get a UC on it, 
and we could not do that, but we had certain promises that information 
would be made available.
  We are still not getting the granular information that is necessary 
for us to properly evaluate this program. We need to get that 
information. We need to have transparency. We have to have 
accountability. You have heard about the highly visible loans that were 
made that were given back by the pro-basketball team and by the larger 
public corporations. We need to see exactly how the money was 
allocated.
  Then there is a second thing we need to do in addition to getting the 
data and having transparency. We need to have a hearing in the Small 
Business and Entrepreneurship Committee with Administrator Carranza 
being there answering questions from the members of the authorizing 
committee as to how this program is working.
  We have to have that public hearing, and, quite frankly, Senator 
Rubio, the chairman of the committee, has been trying to get that for 
us, and he has been rebuffed by the SBA. That is not acceptable. We 
need to have a public hearing. I support Senator Rubio's request that 
we schedule this hearing. It should have been scheduled by now. We 
should have already had this hearing, but we are scheduling it for the 
week we return, the week of June 1, and I hope Administrator Carranza 
will adhere to the request of both the chairman and ranking member to 
be here to answer questions about these programs.
  We have a responsibility. We have appropriated over $700 billion. We 
have a responsibility to conduct an adequate oversight hearing on how 
those funds are being used.
  We need to do more than that. We also need to recognize what is going 
to be the next step and what is going to come next. I will tell you, 
there are certain things that can be done administratively. Some might 
require the action of Congress, but some things can be done 
administratively, and we need to get that done as quickly as possible.
  One of the things we need to get done is to make sure that the 
underserved community gets adequate resources. When we reauthorized the 
extra $310 billion for the PPP program, we allocated $60 billion to 
smaller financial institutions, and that was a step in the right 
direction. I noticed that Secretary Mnuchin mentioned in a hearing this 
week that he was amenable to allocating additional monies to the CDFIs. 
We need to allocate at least $10 billion to the CDFIs and the minority 
depository institutions in order for the resources to be targeted to 
the underserved and the underbanked community. But, quite frankly, I 
think we need to do even more than that.

  I have introduced legislation with Senator Booker that will help to 
develop the financial institutions in the underserved, underbanked 
communities. It will strengthen the abilities of those communities to 
have institutions in place that can help deal with the credit gap in 
the underserved communities. Our legislation would also strengthen the 
SBA tools that serve the underserved communities. We believe all of 
this can be done to help strengthen our commitment, which was in the 
CARES Act, to make sure that all communities are fairly treated with 
the tools that we made available.
  Another thing that we can do immediately is to get the data. That 
information can be made available now. I noticed that Secretary Mnuchin 
has tried to help us get certain data, but we are still not where we 
need to be. We need to get that information now.

[[Page S2535]]

  Another thing we can do--and, quite frankly, I think there is 
bipartisan support and a willingness on behalf of the administration--
is to deal with returning citizens who were denied any ability to 
participate in the PPP program. My goodness, for a person who has paid 
their debt to society, who has returned to the community, who is 
working a small business, should we say no, we are not going to help 
them survive? They have enough challenges out there. We certainly don't 
want to take away their ability to take advantage of tools that are 
available to all Americans in order to help their small businesses. I 
believe there is bipartisan support for this, and we hope that we will 
be able to get that done administratively. After all, the restrictions 
were imposed administratively. They can be removed administratively.
  Then there is another issue that we need to deal with immediately, 
and that is the 8-week restriction that is in the PPP program. It was 
well intended when we passed it. It was based on the dollars that were 
available, and we thought that after 8 weeks, by June, we would see our 
economy back performing at a level in which small businesses could be 
expected to be able to do well. Well, that is clearly not the case. We 
now need to provide additional help to small businesses as it relates 
to the 8-week period.
  We can do that. We recognize that. The monies have already been 
appropriated. This does not really require any additional funding, but 
it will allow us to give small businesses the opportunity to spend the 
money over a longer period of time. Why? Because their businesses 
aren't open. The 8 weeks started the day they got the loan. Yet today 
they are still not at full operation, and some are not at any 
operation.
  So I was pleased to see that the House acted on this by extending 
this to 24 weeks. I hope that we could find common ground, because I 
think there is support on both sides of the aisle and with the 
administration to give greater discretion on that 8-week period so that 
it is a longer period of time and so that the small businesses have the 
opportunity to spend the funds that are under the loan in a way that 
they can get maximum forgiveness of that loan, which will also require 
us to extend the June 30 date for those businesses that need extra time 
in order to bring their workers back.
  I think there is general agreement on this. I hope that we can act 
this week on that provision, because by the time we come back after 
recess, the very first loans that have been issued under the PPP 
program will have reached their 8-week period, where loan forgiveness 
applications are going to start to be processed. We need to act before 
that date. There is a sense of urgency. We need to get that done this 
week, if at all possible, and we should work to try to get that done.
  Let me also point out that, even when we fix the problems with these 
programs--and I hope that by oversight we can get the EIDL Program 
working properly and get those loans out there--we can increase the 
size of the EIDL grants, get more information about the loan 
forgiveness, and get the PPP program working in all communities, 
including the underserved communities, giving more flexibility to 
businesses on the 8-week period.
  We are going to need additional help. Eight weeks of payroll help is 
not going to be enough for many small businesses. So as we start to 
consider the next round, I hope that we will look at a program that is 
targeted to the small businesses that need the help the most.
  When we passed the bill 8 weeks ago, our objective was to get money 
out quickly, and we succeeded in doing that. It was successful. Now we 
need to look at those small businesses that have the greatest need. We 
need to target it to those that have had significant revenue losses. We 
need to target it to the underserved communities. We need to target it 
to the smaller of the small businesses. If we can target the program 
properly, the cost will be much less than the original cost, and we can 
save businesses that otherwise would have a hard time surviving.
  The key to what we did is that we worked together. It was bipartisan 
from the beginning. We need to do that again. Our small businesses, our 
workers, and our economy depend upon our getting this right. I look 
forward to working with my colleagues in order to get this done
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my 
remarks before the vote begins.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.