Texas Border Business
WASHINGTON – Today, Congressman Vicente Gonzalez (TX-15) voted in favor of H.R. 266, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Health Care Enhancement Act. This legislation is an interim emergency funding package that will provide the desperately needed resources to sustain efforts to protect the lives and livelihoods of the American people. It will now go to the President’s desk for signature.
“The health, safety, and livelihoods of those in the 15th District come first,” said Congressman Vicente Gonzalez. “This bipartisan legislation will help hospitals and health workers on the frontlines and those on Main Street struggling to get by. Moving forward, we must ensure that any and all aid is distributed in a fair and equitable manner to who demonstrate the greatest need.”
H.R. 266 builds on the bipartisan Coronavirus, Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act by replenishing funding for key Small Business Administration (SBA) loan and grant programs, and increasing federal funding for hospitals, health care workers, and testing. The measure includes:
- $310 billion in additional funding for the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program with, with $30 billion reserved for community-based lenders, small banks and credit unions and $30 billion for medium-sized banks and credit unions;
- $50 billion for SBA disaster lending, translating into more than $350 billion in loans, and $10 billion in SBA disaster grants;
- $75 billion to provide resources to the frontlines, including Personal Protective Equipment; and
- $25 billion for testing, a critical component of any plan to reopening the economy and resuming our lives.
In addition to this funding, the administration has agreed to a national strategic testing policy that will focus on increasing domestic testing capacity, strong protections to ensure that our nation’s farmers have access to SBA loans and grants, and support future legislation significantly lowering the interest rate on advance payments, lengthening the repayment schedule and distributing payments from general revenues not the Hospital Insurance Fund.
Congressman Gonzalez recently led a statement with the Chairs of the Congressional Tri-Caucus in response to recent reports that large corporations, rather than small businesses, received millions and even billions of dollars in loans from major banks participating in the Small Business Administration (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Full text of H.R. 266 can be found here.
