Senate Cloture Vote on "Phase Three" failed last night.

Failed again. Last night 47-47 straight party line. Today 49-46 with Doug Jones (Ala) the only Democrat voting for cloture.

Sounds like the Senate will have it hammered out and hopefully can proceed early tomorrow.

Time is extremely important, I already feel like they are a couple weeks behind. Par.

Some latest details here:
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/489158-senate-on-cusp-of-stimulus-deal-after-agreements-in-key-areas

Senate passes $2 trillion economic aid package unanimously 96-0. On to the House.

7 things to know:
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/489575-7-things-to-know-about-the-coronavirus-stimulus-package

That's what I was thinking on Monday...QE Infinity.

I watched the video.

Good explanation on why Gold crashed in 2008 and some of the recent week movements.

I updated the first post with updated information on the Phase Three Senate bill.

I like having a resource for the cumulative monetary actions taken and bills passed, the main source being the investopedia page
https://www.investopedia.com/government-stimulus-efforts-to-fight-the-covid-19-crisis-4799723#citation-69

Phase Four in the works

After Three Coronavirus Stimulus Packages, Congress Is Already Prepping Phase Four

Push for yet more government support to culminate in April, before election-year politics undermine further compromise

y Jacob M. Schlesinger and
Joshua Jamerson
Updated March 29, 2020 5:39 pm ET

As lawmakers last week completed a record-shattering economic-rescue package estimated at $2 trillion, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) predicted: “This is certainly not the end of our work here in Congress—rather the end of the beginning.”

Legislators from both parties, administration officials, economists, think tanks and lobbyists are already roughing out the contours of yet another emergency-spending package—perhaps larger than the last—to try to keep the coronavirus crisis from turning into a 21st-century Great Depression. Many expect the debate to begin in earnest by late April.

“There’s talk of a multi-trillion-dollar program, given the size of the shutdown,” says Stephen Moore, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “There’s a general recognition that we need something big to get some juice into the economy,” adds Mr. Moore, an outside economic consultant to the Trump administration and some congressional Republicans.

The ideas being floated include extending last week’s package to make the benefits last longer, as well as plugging in likely holes in the hastily assembled bill. One item in particular cited by both President Trump and Democratic leaders is a desire for more money to shore up state government budgets collapsing under lost tax revenues and new spending demands.

A common theme from economists and legislators across the political spectrum: The latest measure was mainly about keeping U.S. commerce on life support while it endures a medically induced coma. That is, paying businesses and workers revenues and wages lost during the shutdown. A next phase would likely pivot from stabilization to stimulus—providing the patient a robust regimen of physical therapy in an attempt to get the economy back to full health.

Action so far has been “about mitigation,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said at a Thursday press conference. “Next, we’ll go from emergency mitigation to recovery…to grow the economy and create more jobs.” She later called the new law “a very big down payment.”

As the coronavirus has ravaged U.S. business over the past month, lawmakers have reacted with uncharacteristic speed and unity to try to contain the damage. In just three weeks, a divided Congress has passed three major pieces of legislation to address the pandemic.

Phase one, which President Trump signed March 3, provided $8.3 billion in fresh funds for health agencies and testing, and for small-business loan subsidies. Phase two, enacted March 18 and worth about $100 billion, had tax credits for employers offering paid sick leave, and increases to unemployment benefits and food assistance. The phase-three package of roughly $2-trillion, completed Friday, includes checks to households, bailouts for airlines and other distressed industries, and loans and grants for small business.

One question hanging over what is already being called “Phase Four” is whether that spirit of urgency and compromise can continue as the downturn advances. Or, will Washington return to the polarization that has often paralyzed Congress in recent years—especially as the November elections erode incentives for cross-party cooperation?

Another concern: Legislating amid travel restrictions and the risk that more in Congress come down with the disease.

Policy makers and economists will need to assess in coming weeks whether the most recent package does enough to tide over companies and workers through the end of the shutdown—whenever that occurs—or whether prolonged closures require another dosage of the same medicine.

The aid in the latest measure was calculated to help small businesses cover about eight weeks of payroll. That should be sufficient if the economy largely reopens by late May. But that is still far from certain. A longer quarantine might require, at a minimum, renewal of the same assistance.

“It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to keep the ecosystem of commerce alive for two months, just to kill it in nine weeks by not extending that program,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, who has been working with GOP lawmakers on crisis-response measures.

A bigger debate is emerging over whether Congress needs to do more, even if the disease crests by late spring. Some conservatives who supported the latest measure will likely be more hesitant about further action, worried that the crisis might turn into a permanent expansion of government intervention in the private sector.

“I would hope anybody that’s talking about a phase four would pause right now,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) said Friday on Fox News. “Let’s make sure this is actually working in the process and be smart, get the data back of where—if—we do need more help.”

The main focus of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) is on making sure the phase-three legislation is implemented properly and hasn’t yet pivoted to talks regarding future stimulus packages, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

Momentum might also be slowed by the second-guessing that inevitably follows big-spending programs, especially one thrown together so quickly. “My guess is that this bill won’t wear well over time, and Congress isn’t going to be inclined do another big package,” says Andy Laperriere, a Washington policy analyst with Cornerstone Macro, an investor advisory firm. “There will be fraud, companies getting money going into bankruptcy, things that people on the left and right won’t like.”

Any debate over new spending will likely reopen the ideological splits that were largely papered over during the past few weeks. “The left is going to want to do infrastructure, welfare payments and food stamps,” says Mr. Moore. “Our side will want to do tax cuts and deregulation.”

Mr. Moore has discussed with administration officials and congressional Republicans the idea of suspending the payroll tax through the end of the year, which he estimates would cost about $700 billion. Mr. Trump had pushed that idea early in the crisis, but withdrew it amid bipartisan objections on Capitol Hill.

The top agenda item for many Democrats is adding to the $150 billion the just-passed law doled out to state governments. Many analysts consider that insufficient. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo branded the measure “really terrible for the state of New York,” saying the $4 billion his hard-hit state is slated to receive could be less than a third of the pandemic-induced budget shortfall.

“We don’t want states to say they can’t hire teachers or anybody else because they spent all their money on the coronavirus,” says Jay Shambaugh, director of the left-leaning Hamilton Project think tank and who was an economic adviser to President Obama.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-three-coronavirus-stimulus-packages-congress-is-already-prepping-phase-four-11585483203

Additional response from the Fed

On March 31st, amid other technical changes, the Federal Reserve lowered capital requirements for banks
(20)

On April 6, the Fed announced that it will establish another lending facility to help provide financing to expand the Small Business Administration's loan program under the stimulus bill (21)

(20) https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/bcreg20200401a.htm
(21) https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20200406a.htm?utm_source=market-sum&utm_campaign=www.investopedia.com&utm_term=&utm_medium=email

Fed Preparing to Finance New Small-Business Payroll Loans
Fed, Treasury working on program to facilitate more lending to small businesses

By Kate Davidson and
Nick Timiraos
Updated April 6, 2020 6:45 pm ET

WASHINGTON—The Federal Reserve said Monday it would create a new program to finance loans that banks and other lenders make through the government’s emergency small-business lending program.

The move will free up financial firms to make more loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration’s Payroll Protection Program, part of a $2.2 trillion economic relief package President Trump signed last month to help individuals and businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement Monday afternoon, the Fed said that to facilitate more lending to small businesses, it would establish a facility that offers term financing backed by PPP loans. It said additional details would be announced later this week.

The Fed has been working on the program with the Treasury Department. The loans are designed to cover about two months of payroll expenses and other essential costs, and can be forgiven if businesses maintain the size of their workforce.

The banking industry has been pressing the Trump administration to set up a program to purchase the loans from lenders who originate them, which would help free up banks’ balance sheets so they can make more of the loans.

The loans don’t require the Fed or the Treasury to take on the risk of bearing losses because they are already insured by the Small Business Administration, a government agency. As a result, the Fed’s financing of the loans would be akin to how other government-backed entities purchase mortgages that are pooled together and issued as securities, enabling lenders to make more mortgages that meet certain standards.

“This concept works well in the American mortgage market and should be replicated to meet program loan demand in this crisis,” Rebecca Romero Rainey, the president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said in a letter Sunday to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The Fed faces restrictions on the types of assets it can purchase directly, but it can create lending facilities with broad latitude to acquire loans or other assets.

The Fed has already launched six facilities since the coronavirus pandemic led to widespread shutdowns of commercial activity that has roiled financial markets, including a facility under which it will lend money to investors to buy securities backed by small business and student and credit-card loans.

Ms. Romero Rainey said the Fed should also provide advances to banks against the loans to further enhance the capacity of the small-business lending program.

Under the law, banks are required to keep the loans on their books for seven weeks before selling them. That could make it difficult for smaller banks with limited capital and liquidity constraints to keep up with customer demand, a banking industry official said.

Banks have struggled to keep up with a surge in demand for the new loans after the program launched last Friday, and Mr. Trump said on Twitter he would go back to Congress for more money if the funds run out. As of Monday morning, the SBA had processed 124,000 loans totaling $36 billion, from over 2,300 lenders, Treasury officials told lawmakers.

The creation of an outlet for financing the loans shows how Washington is moving on the fly to expand the program as necessary in the coming weeks.

The program is separate from a forthcoming Fed program, called the Main Street Lending Facility, that will help aid businesses that are too large to qualify for help from the SBA programs and too small to receive aid from lending facilities the Fed is creating for large, highly-rated corporations.

Meanwhile, officials have been working out some of the early kinks of the program, which the Treasury and SBA set up in just seven days.

The government doubled the interest rate on the loans, to 1%, just hours before the program started after small banks complained the low rate would make the loans unprofitable for many banks.

The Fed’s latest expansion will particularly benefit community banks, whose balance sheets could quickly become overextended by the expected loan volume.

Andy Schornack, chief executive of Flagship Bank Minnesota, based in Wayzata, Minn., said the bank had planned to cap its loan volume at about 15% of its current balance sheet. “If we can’t turn around and sell quickly after making the loans, it’s still taking up balance-sheet space,” Mr. Schornack said.

First Bank in Hamilton, N.J., has received more than 500 requests for SBA loans, said Chief Executive Patrick Ryan. The bank typically processes about five SBA loans per year. The Fed’s announcement Monday was “good news,” he said. “It will be helpful to be able to sell some of these to create capacity to make more loans.”

Some in Silicon Valley also warned that startups could be shut out of the program because federal rules make it difficult for firms with private-equity or venture-capital bankers to qualify as small businesses.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-preparing-to-purchase-new-small-business-payroll-loans-11586194588

SBA Under Fire for Failing to Get Aid to Struggling Small Businesses
Many businesses have applied for the emergency grants—and are still waiting for the money to arrive

By Amara Omeokwe and
Yuka Hayashi
April 8, 2020 7:00 am ET

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WASHINGTON—A federal program to help small companies weather the coronavirus fallout has failed to distribute funds quickly, according to lawmakers, business advocates and entrepreneurs, many of whom are counting on the aid to survive.

Congress directed the Small Business Administration last month to provide grants of up to $10,000 to businesses within three days of their application to the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.

Since then, many businesses have applied for the emergency grants, according to small business advocates—and so far those applicants appear to be still waiting for the money.

“Based on our members’ feedback and our tracking, EIDL funds have yet to flow,” said Karen Kerrigan, chief executive of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, an advocacy group. “It seems that one gut-punch is followed by another, and hopefully these funds will flow soon.”

SBA officials didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment on the status of the grants.

The $10 billion grant program was signed into law on March 27 as part of Congress’s $2 trillion coronavirus relief package. The grants are administered directly by the SBA and are separate from the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program that guarantees (and is designed to forgive) loans by banks and other lenders to small businesses.

Congress is expected to add $250 billion to the Paycheck Protection Program, but members are also concerned about the grant program.

In a letter to SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza on April 2, four U.S. senators asked whether agency staff could meet the legislatively mandated requirement to deliver funding within three days of a disaster loan application.

“I have heard far too many of my constituents in Maryland expressing frustration and confusion about the status of SBA’s direct disaster loan and grant programs,“ Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democratic signer said in a statement. ”We know standing up a new grant program is an enormous task for SBA, but its communication with small businesses must improve dramatically so that owners can make informed decisions.”

Adam Rammel, co-owner of the Brewfontaine restaurant in Bellefontaine, Ohio, said he originally applied for a disaster loan on March 20, and then reapplied about 10 days later, after the SBA released a new application. The updated form allows applicants to indicate they would like to receive a grant.

Mr. Rammel hasn’t received word on the status of the grant or the loan itself. “Right now, it’s just a waiting game,” he said. ”We don’t know when that money is going to hit.”

David Lee, who owns Blue Moon Construction in St. Petersburg, Fla., said he applied for the disaster loan program on March 30 but hasn’t received any communication from the SBA since.

“That $10,000 dollars is a really big deal to us,” Mr. Lee said. His land-clearing company employs him and one other worker, and Mr. Lee estimated the grant would help keep the business afloat until mid-June.

Business applicants say they have also been confused by changing statements from the SBA on when money will be available and the amount.

Over the past week, the SBA has repeatedly changed the time frame for the payment of a loan advance—from three days and “within days” to “a week to 10 days,” according to its website and regional offices’ webinars.

How the agency will determine the grant amount a business should receive also remains unclear. The disaster loan application form allows applicants to seek consideration for a grant but doesn’t provide a means to request a specific amount. The relief package legislation didn’t specify how the SBA should calculate the amount of each grant, leaving some businesses hoping they would receive a full $10,000.

However, SBA regional officials have said in recent days the amount would depend on the size of the business’s operating expenses. A document posted as of Monday evening on its Massachusetts district office’s website indicated the amount would be $1,000 per employee up to a maximum of $10,000.

“I guess at this point, we’re all just looking for a little bit of clarity and guidance from the SBA themselves,” said Shawn Short, owner at Aspen Valley Group, a Denver-based retailer of cannabidiol and hemp products.

The delay comes as the SBA, a small agency with 4,000 employees, faces an abrupt and steep increase in its workload. Before this year, the SBA on average issued about $2 billion in disaster loans annually, an SBA official said last month.

To handle the large volume of disaster loan applications, the agency has hired an outside mortgage company to help process 2,000 loan applications a minute, Ili Spahiu, a Massachusetts district official, said on a webinar Tuesday.

The SBA has also hired 7,000 agents to answer calls from business owners, shortening the wait time significantly, he said.

The government says grants provided to applicants for coronavirus-related disaster loans don’t have to be repaid and are provided to eligible businesses even if they are ultimately rejected for the disaster loans themselves.

The loans are generally open to businesses and nonprofits with fewer than 500 employees. Prospective borrowers can apply for up to $2 million dollars in loan funds, and the loans carry a 3.75% interest rate for businesses and a 2.75% rate for nonprofits.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sba-under-fire-for-failing-to-get-aid-to-struggling-small-businesses-11586343600

Fed Expands Corporate-Debt Backstops, Unveils New Programs to Aid States, Cities and Small Businesses
Latest round of emergency facilities expands central bank’s footprint into credit markets it has previously avoided

By Nick Timiraos
Updated April 9, 2020 8:50 am ET

The Federal Reserve unveiled an array of programs Thursday that it said would provide $2.3 trillion in loans, expanding the Fed’s operations to reach small and midsize businesses and U.S. cities and states.

The Fed also said it would expand previously announced corporate lending programs to include some classes of riskier debt that had been excluded, including allowing firms that until recently had been rated as investment-grade to participate in those facilities.

They take the Fed well beyond the lender-of-last-resort functions it played in 2008 to prevent a financial panic from deepening the economic downturn and rely on hundreds of billions of dollars in Treasury money that Congress made available in the recent $2 trillion economic-relief legislation.

“Our country’s highest priority must be to address this public-health crisis, providing care for the ill and limiting the further spread of the virus,” said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in a statement. “The Fed’s role is to provide as much relief and stability as we can during this period of constrained economic activity, and our actions today will help ensure that the eventual recovery is as vigorous as possible.”

The Fed said it would allow new classes of debt in the previously announced Term Asset-Backed Securities Lending Facility, or TALF, that were excluded from that facility when it was used after the 2008 financial crisis to support consumer and business credit markets.

The Fed will now accept triple-A rated tranches of existing commercial mortgage-backed securities and newly issued collateralized loan obligations. Under TALF, the Fed lends money to investors to buy securities backed by credit-card loans and other consumer debt. The Fed has made $100 billion available for that program and didn’t increase the amount Thursday.

The central bank also announced it would backstop some pieces of riskier corporate debt in two previously established facilities, and the Treasury increased to $75 billion from $20 billion the amount of money available to cover losses the Fed might sustain as a result.

One corporate credit backstop to support new debt issuance of highly rated firms will be expanded to include so-called “fallen angels” that were investment-grade in mid-March but have subsequently been downgraded one notch, from triple-B to double-B. A second corporate credit backstop will allow a limited amount of purchases of non-investment-grade debt in exchange-traded funds.

After firing its arsenal at funding markets last month to prevent a public-health crisis from morphing into a financial crisis, the Fed later said it would throw another kitchen sink at credit markets that have broken down.

On Thursday, the central bank expanded those efforts and further unveiled a new generation of lending facilities to prevent a liquidity crunch from turning into a solvency crisis for American businesses, states and cities.

The Fed said it would offer through banks four-year loans in which payments can be deferred for one year to businesses with up to 10,000 employees or revenues of less than $2.5 billion. Loans through this Main Street Lending Program, which will initially fund up to $600 billion in loans, will be subject to restrictions on stock buybacks, dividends and executive compensation. Firms that have received separate forgivable loans for payroll costs from the Small Business Administration will be eligible to seek Main Street loans as well.

To ease funding strains for cities and states seeing large revenue drops and rising expenses from simultaneous economic and health crises, the Fed said it would purchase up to $500 billion in short-term debt directly from U.S. states, the District of Columbia, U.S. counties with at least two million residents, and U.S. cities with at least one million residents.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-announces-new-facilities-to-support-2-3-trillion-in-lending-11586435450?mod=hp_lead_pos4

Treasury, Airlines Reach Agreement on Coronavirus Aid
Ten major airlines intend to accept government payroll support; President Trump touts agreement

By Alison Sider and
Kate Davidson

Updated April 14, 2020 7:41 pm ET

WASHINGTON—The biggest U.S. airlines reached an agreement in principle with the federal government on financial assistance aimed at preventing layoffs in an industry hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Treasury Department said Tuesday that 10 of the 12 largest airlines have told the government they intend to accept assistance from the $2.2 trillion economic relief package passed last month.

The biggest domestic airlines— United Airlines Holdings Inc., UAL -10.42% Delta Air Lines Inc., DAL -6.67% American Airlines Group Inc. AAL -7.65% and Southwest Airlines Co. LUV -5.91% — all agreed to receive aid. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that conversations continue with some other airlines and that officials were also working on guidance for aid to cargo carriers and contractors.

“We look forward to working with the airlines to finalize the necessary agreements and disburse funds as quickly as possible,” he said in a statement.

President Trump said at a briefing that the aid would help airlines through a tough period.

Airline shares rose sharply in after-hours trading following the announcement, with United trading up 9%, American up 13% and Delta up 10%.

Demand for air travel has all but evaporated over the past few months, as countries around the world imposed restrictions to try to slow the virus’s spread. Airlines have slashed flying by upward of 70% and say many flights are still nearly empty.

The Treasury’s assistance includes $25 billion in direct aid to allow passenger airlines to continue paying salaries and benefits to employees in the coming months. The payroll assistance “will support American workers and help preserve the strategic importance of the airline industry while allowing for appropriate compensation to the taxpayers,” Mr. Mnuchin said in a statement.

Airline executives spent this past weekend in discussions with federal officials. On Friday Mr. Mnuchin told the largest carriers that 30% of the assistance would need to be repaid and that airlines would have to offer stock warrants on a portion of those funds.

Airline industry officials had believed the money would come as grants that wouldn’t need to be paid back. The government hadn’t been willing to significantly alter terms, including some repayment to taxpayers, officials and others familiar with the talks have said.

Details that some airlines provided on Tuesday hewed to the terms that federal officials outlined last week. Many domestic airlines are in dire need of cash to pay workers and maintain planes.

Delta is set to receive $5.4 billion, including a $1.6 billion 10-year loan. The airline will also provide the government with warrants to acquire about 1% of Delta stock at $24.39 per share over five years, a significant discount to where the stock traded before the current crisis. Delta shares were near $60 at the start of the year.

“This is an essential step, but just one of many that will get us through the next several months,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian wrote to employees.

JetBlue JBLU -5.55% said the $936 million it will receive as a $685 million grant and a $251 million loan would cover 76% of payroll.

“While I am happy we are receiving this much-needed cash for payroll now, it adds to the significant debt we are taking on as we burn through our cash reserves,” JetBlue Airways Corp. CEO Robin Hayes said in a statement.

Alaska Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Allegiant Air, Hawaiian Airlines and SkyWest Airlines also agreed to accept that aid, the Treasury said.

Spirit Airlines Inc., a big discount carrier that wasn’t listed in the announcement, said it expects to agree on terms with the Treasury soon. Republic Airways, which operates flights for major airlines, said it is also still in discussions with the Treasury.

American Airlines said it would receive $5.8 billion under the program: $4.1 billion as a direct grant and $1.7 billion as a low-interest loan. The airline said it would separately apply for a $4.75 billion loan from the Treasury under another loan program for airlines established by the stimulus.

“We now believe we have the financial resources necessary to help us withstand this crisis and be in position to serve the traveling public when they are ready to start flying again,” American Airlines Chief Executive Doug Parker and President Robert Isom wrote in a letter to employees.

Southwest said it expects to receive over $3.2 billion through the program, including $1 billion as an unsecured 10-year loan at low interest rates. The airline said the loan includes 2.6 million warrants, which the government can convert to stock for a fixed price.

“We applaud the quick action by the U.S. Department of Treasury to infuse liquidity into the economy and try to keep businesses open and people on the job,” Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said in a statement.

Other airlines didn’t immediately provide details of the aid they expected to receive.

Carriers had said without government help they would have to make significant reductions to their staffs, but accepting the money means airlines won’t be allowed to lay off or furlough workers involuntarily until October.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/treasury-airlines-reach-agreement-on-aid-11586898079

[Edited on 4/16/2020 by nebish]

Small business rescue loan program hits $349 billion limit and is now out of money

Published Thu, Apr 16 202010:38 AM EDTUpdated 3 hours ago

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/16/small-business-rescue-loan-program-hits-349-billion-limit-and-is-now-out-of-money.html

I think all of this aid, grants and loans isn't going to be enough. It's all temporary anyway, there is going to be severe hardship for quite a while I fear. The fed and the treasury can't just keep coming up with new programs and more and more credit and cash. We're going to be screwed.

Senate passes $484 billion coronavirus bill for small business and hospital relief, testing

Published Tue, Apr 21 20205:06 PM EDTUpdated Moments Ago

The Senate on Tuesday passed a $484 billion package to bolster small businesses and hospitals ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic and expand testing for Covid-19.

After the unanimous Senate vote, the bill heads to the House, which aims to approve it by Thursday.

The measure injects another $310 billion into a key loan program designed to keep employees on small company payrolls. The initial $350 billion in the so-called Paycheck Protection Program, created as part of the $2 trillion rescue package passed last month, dried up last week. It is unclear how many firms have actually received the money.

The bill passed Tuesday allocates $60 billion for small lenders as part of the small business aid program. It puts another $60 billion toward Small Business Administration disaster assistance loans and grants. It includes $75 billion in hospital relief and $25 billion for coronavirus testing.

The bill piles more money into an unprecedented government effort to relieve an economy and health-care system devastated by the coronavirus outbreak. More than 22 million people filed for unemployment benefits over the latest four-week period as businesses in most of the country remain closed to slow Covid-19′s spread.

The small business loans, forgivable if recipients use the money for wages, benefits, rent and utilities, are designed to keep employees on the payroll. The money dried up quickly, though, leaving numerous small businesses in limbo. The fact that some larger chain companies benefited from the first round of funding increased frustrations for firm owners who did not receive loans.

Earlier this month, Democrats rejected a Republican proposal to put $250 billion into the existing small business program. Democrats pushed for tweaks, including more money for rural and minority-owned small businesses and additional funding for SBA disaster assistance loans and grants. They also sought more money for hospitals, states and municipalities — though Republicans opposed funding for governments, which the bill passed Tuesday did not include.

The GOP accused Democrats of abandoning small business owners and workers by not quickly injecting money into the program.

“I am just sorry that it took my colleagues in Democratic leadership 12 days to accept the inevitable, and that they shut down emergency support for Main Street in a search for partisan ‘leverage’ that never materialized,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday before the Senate passed the legislation.

Speaking ahead of the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the bill “significantly better and broader” than the one Democrats blocked earlier this month. He said it is more “effective’ and “inclusive,” adding that it addressed additional priorities such as hospital funding and testing.

Even as the bill passed with no opposition, two senators out of the handful of lawmakers present Tuesday criticized the chamber’s process. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, argued that the Senate should stop trying to pass legislation by unanimous vote and bring back lawmakers for an official tally.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., criticized the staggering sums of taxpayer money Congress has directed toward the crisis, contending the U.S. should reopen its economy instead.

Congress will likely pass one or more additional bills to try to rescue the economy after it approves the emergency small business bill. Democrats plan to push to expand vote-by-mail during the pandemic, extend the enhanced unemployment insurance passed last month and increase protections for Americans still required to go into work.

Schumer said he would seek money for the U.S. Postal Service, assistance for renters and hazard pay for workers.

In tweets Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he wanted to see relief for state and local governments, along with infrastructure funding and a payroll tax cut, in the next congressional package.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/21/coronavirus-senate-passes-484-billion-small-business-relief-bill.html

How long after the dust settles do we start hearing about waste, fraud and abuse of some of these programs?