On Tuesday, April 21, 2020 the U.S. Senate passed the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Environment Act: A $484 billion relief package to fund small business loans, hospital aid, and testing for COVID-19. Of that $484 billion, $310 billion will go directly to PPP funding. The original PPP program ($349 billion) ran out of money less than two weeks after it opened, having approved over 1.66 million loans, thus the renewed funding could likewise be quick to be depleted.
Besides decreased funding, concerns exist due to a lack of changes to the original PPP’s guidelines, which became infamous due to what was seen as an inability for “mom & pop” small businesses to find a lender to apply to in time. Still, the new PPP Act has yet to approved by the House, so its final form is unclear. Nevertheless, there are some small improvements in that, of the $310 billion authorized for the Paycheck Protection Program, $60 billion will be set aside for smaller lending facilities, including “community financial institutions, small insured depository institutions and credit unions with assets less than $10 billion.” There will also be $10 billion for grants under the Emergency Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, $50 billion for disaster recovery loans and $2.1 billion for additional salaries and expenses for the Small Business Administration.
The bill will also provide $75 billion for hospitals and health care providers stretched thin by the pandemic to address Coronavirus expenses and lost revenue, and an additional $25 billion to facilitate and expand “necessary expenses to research, develop, validate, manufacture, purchase, administer and expand capacity for COVID-19 tests.”
More details at: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/21/politics/chuck-schumer-coronavirus-relief-small-business-cnntv/index.html
This bill has since been passed by the house on 4/23/20 with no changes made, and will be signed into law later today.
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California has required employers to “indemnify” employees for “necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedience to the directions of the employer” in substantially the same terms since 1937 under Labor Code § 2802.
