- Jun 6, 2007
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Seven days ago, June 5th, the Congress and the President enacted into law a good and compellingly needed amendment to the CARES Act's "Small Businesses Assistance Package called the Paycheck Protection Program". This amending legislation is called the "PPP Flexibility Act" and the good work that it does is that it extends the time period from two months to "six" months for the monies that small businesses borrowed through this program to qualify for the loan forgiveness eligibility of this program and it requires that only sixty percent of the borrowed monies be spent on payroll as opposed to the prior mandate which required seventy-five percent of the borrowed monies be spent on payroll in order for the loan amount to be eligible for loan forgiveness. These amendments were compellingly needed because the country's needs were to help these small businesses survive the period from the economic shutdown thru reopening and until business activity returns to some level of normality where these businesses will enter into a state of profitability. This bridge period will clearly be longer than two months and extending this period empowers these small businesses to stretch out the borrowed money so they can survive and make it to this time when the economy essentially recovers and the flexibility to use more of the borrowed money on non-wage expenses will help these businesses pay their needed expenses so they can stay in business during the recovery period.
The lesson for the American people and the people that hold elected office in America from this second effort to get this Small Business Program in the CARES Act right or to meet the country's needs is why cannot America's government always operate effectively like it did with this latter legislation why cannot America's government do what it did there and operate on the merits of the issue why does it allow politics and limited vision "ideology" drive its actions. America could be easily ten times better than it is if "merits of the issue" were driving members of Congress's and the President's actions. From as soon as the American public was able to read the CARES Act small business owners were saying this program won't meet my needs to survive I don't need help paying employees when I have no business these owners were saying I need money to pay my expenses and stay in business until the economy reopens and business returns to some semblance of normalcy. Democrats instead of pandering for applause from their political base in engineering a program that appeared to keep workers employed they should have been focused on helping small business employers survive this economic shutdown so these workers would have "permanent" jobs. Republicans who like most people have "common sense" knew this CARES Act Small Business Program was utterly foolish because it would not help the majority of small businesses bridge the economic shutdown and recovery but they said nothing because their primary care was about the CARES acts tax provisions which allowed for carrying back operating losses which meant tens of billions of dollars for their big business political base. Members of Congress need to change the way they conduct themselves and as a matter of normal course start basing their decisions on the merits of the issues and not politics and misguided ideology and if they don't the American people need to force these elected officials to do a dramatically better job at doing their job by changing the U.S. Constitution to provide for term limits for Senators and House members so they will stop being unduly focused on holding onto their job instead of focused on serving the American people!
The lesson for the American people and the people that hold elected office in America from this second effort to get this Small Business Program in the CARES Act right or to meet the country's needs is why cannot America's government always operate effectively like it did with this latter legislation why cannot America's government do what it did there and operate on the merits of the issue why does it allow politics and limited vision "ideology" drive its actions. America could be easily ten times better than it is if "merits of the issue" were driving members of Congress's and the President's actions. From as soon as the American public was able to read the CARES Act small business owners were saying this program won't meet my needs to survive I don't need help paying employees when I have no business these owners were saying I need money to pay my expenses and stay in business until the economy reopens and business returns to some semblance of normalcy. Democrats instead of pandering for applause from their political base in engineering a program that appeared to keep workers employed they should have been focused on helping small business employers survive this economic shutdown so these workers would have "permanent" jobs. Republicans who like most people have "common sense" knew this CARES Act Small Business Program was utterly foolish because it would not help the majority of small businesses bridge the economic shutdown and recovery but they said nothing because their primary care was about the CARES acts tax provisions which allowed for carrying back operating losses which meant tens of billions of dollars for their big business political base. Members of Congress need to change the way they conduct themselves and as a matter of normal course start basing their decisions on the merits of the issues and not politics and misguided ideology and if they don't the American people need to force these elected officials to do a dramatically better job at doing their job by changing the U.S. Constitution to provide for term limits for Senators and House members so they will stop being unduly focused on holding onto their job instead of focused on serving the American people!
