Congressman Garret Graves is optimistic Congress will approve additional funding for a program designed to help small businesses maintain payroll.
The 350 billion dollar program ran out of cash just 13 days after it began dispersing money earlier this month, and Graves says now many businesses can’t access the funds.
“We started trying to replenish this over a week ago which would have allowed for a seamless transition to a second pot of funds. No one would have noticed a single second of delay,” said Graves.
The program has come under fire for allowing many companies worth tens, or hundreds of millions of dollars to access the funds
The program offers forgivable loans to companies with fewer than 500 employees who spend 75 percent of their loan allotment on payroll. Graves says it was highly popular.
“The federal bureaucracy for one of the few times ever actually acted quickly, put a federal program together within one week that worked pretty well. There were tens of thousands of loans approved in Louisiana,” said Graves.
Qualifying businesses received a loan worth 2.5 times their average monthly payroll from 2019. The SBA reported the average disbursement was 206,000 dollars.
Graves says the program has bipartisan support but it’s being held up by politicians who want to tie it to pet projects.
“I mean this is just awful, people are not going to receive paychecks solely because of partisan fighting, not because of merit,” said Graves.
Graves says if the program isn’t replenished by the end of the month then everyone in Congress should be thrown out.
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