HB 23-04: More Money for Hurting Small Businesses Act (Passed)

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More Money for Hurting Small Businesses Act.

1. $1,000,000,000 shall be available until expended, that such amounts may be transferred to the Small Business Administration for the cost of direct loans or aid in any fiscal year may be used to make economic injury disaster loans or other aid to small businesses to recoup losses from any government-imposed shutdown.

2. Section 5 of the Coronavirus Containment and Emergency Response Act shall be amended as follows:

Section 5. Mandatory Medical Paid Leave

(a.) All employed people in Atlasia who have been diagnosed with coronavirus or are caring for family members with coronavirus must receive two-thirds of their wages for up to three months. These wage payments shall be paid by the Atlasian federal government.

Sponsor: Cinyc
House Designation: HB 23-04

72 hours to debate.

[cinyc]

The reason for this bill is simple - our small businesses are getting slammed by government directives due to the coronavirus outbreak. We’ve ordered restaurants and bars to close. $20 million in loans isn’t enough to stop the damages caused by government action. Heck, $1 billion might not be enough. We need more.

Plus, these shuttered small businesses can’t afford to pay their employees sick leave. They’re already in dire fiscal straits due to government action.

[thumb21]

Not entirely opposed in principle, but I think this should be for small businesses rather than all businesses.

An amendment:

More Money for Hurting Small Businesses Act.

1. $1,000,000,000 shall be available until expended, that such amounts may be transferred to the Small Business Administration for the cost of direct loans or aid in any fiscal year may be used to make economic injury disaster loans or other aid to small businesses to recoup losses from any government-imposed shutdown.

2. Section 5 of the Coronavirus Containment and Emergency Response Act shall be amended as follows:

Section 5. Mandatory Medical Paid Leave

(a.) All employed people in Atlasia who have been diagnosed with coronavirus or are caring for family members with coronavirus must receive two-thirds of their wages for up to three months. For businesses with up to 250 employees, these wage payments shall be paid by the Atlasian federal government.

[cinyc]

[Prior Amendment, though I mistakenly edited this post. Basically, it said I could live with Speaker Thumb's amendment, then I proposed this:]

More Money for Hurting Small Businesses Act.

1. $10,000,000,000 shall be available until expended, that such amounts may be transferred to the Small Business Administration for the cost of direct loans or aid in any fiscal year may be used to make economic injury disaster loans or other aid to small businesses to recoup losses from any government-imposed shutdown.

2. Section 5 of the Coronavirus Containment and Emergency Response Act shall be amended as follows:
Quote
Section 5. Mandatory Medical Paid Leave

(a.) All employed people in Atlasia who have been diagnosed with coronavirus or are caring for family members with coronavirus must receive two-thirds of their wages for up to three months. For businesses with up to 250 employees, these wage payments shall be paid by the Atlasian federal government.

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Mine and Cinyc's amendments are adopted.

[Lumine]

Just wanted to state this has my full support, and I certainly concurr that we need significant investment if we want to prevent the collapse of several small businesses. In that light I wholeheartedly support the amendment, and would support a higher sum as well given what appears to be the current context.

[RC (a la Frémont)]

I don't take this lightly, small businesses are truly one of the most important aspects of our economy and we need to support them in these times or the economy will really be in for it. This bill has my support.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I have heard the idea tossed around of making it a grant for all businesses that retain their workers, this could be a great incentive to retain workforce.

It also should probably be about $50 billion if that is where they are at IRL.

[cinyc]

I have heard the idea tossed around of making it a grant for all businesses that retain their workers, this could be a great incentive to retain workforce.

It also should probably be about $50 billion if that is where they are at IRL.

Has the GM said where we are recently? I haven't seen anything.

[cinyc]

Any other comments? Do we ned to add more money? We can always go back and revisit, if necessary.

[Lumine]

I would actually suggest raising it to 50 billion.

Hopefully we'll get clarification on the GM on what the situation on the ground is, but in this specific context I'd rather see us allocate more money than it is needed than not allocate enough for small businesses.

[cinyc]

I screwed this up upthread by editing the last amendment post, instead of quoting it. Here's my new amendment:

More Money for Hurting Small Businesses Act.

1. $50,000,000,000 shall be available until expended, that such amounts may be transferred to the Small Business Administration for the cost of direct loans or aid in any fiscal year may be used to make economic injury disaster loans or other aid to small businesses to recoup losses from any government-imposed shutdown.

2. Section 5 of the Coronavirus Containment and Emergency Response Act shall be amended as follows:
Quote
Section 5. Mandatory Medical Paid Leave

(a.) All employed people in Atlasia who have been diagnosed with coronavirus or are caring for family members with coronavirus must receive two-thirds of their wages for up to three months. For businesses with up to 250 employees, these wage payments shall be paid by the Atlasian federal government.

[Elcaspar]

Seconding the amendment. It's better to be safe than sorry on the funding.

[cinyc]

Seconding the amendment. It's better to be safe than sorry on the funding.

The US Senate seems to be setting aside $350 billion for small business loans/grants. It's unclear whether Atlasia needs more or less than that. Have we heard from the GM lately?

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Cinyc's amendment is adopted.

Yankee made good points about the idea of grants as a way to discourage layoffs. We could say fund a percentage of wages for businesses retaining employees and could also have a dissincentive such as making a business pay a certain percentage of wages of employees who they've fired for a couple of months. I think that's probably best dealt with in a seperate bill though, since this is specifically for sick pay.

Also just a sidenote, but the law that this bill it trying to amend hasn't been signed yet which could be an issue. Hopefully it will be soon.

[thumb21]

Seconding the amendment. It's better to be safe than sorry on the funding.

The US Senate seems to be setting aside $350 billion for small business loans/grants. It's unclear whether Atlasia needs more or less than that. Have we heard from the GM lately?

Getting worse by the day..

It'd make sense to increase it more, though given the size of the cash payments people are getting in the stimulus bill, I think we'd be fine having this lower than IRL.

[cinyc]

Cinyc's amendment is adopted.

Yankee made good points about the idea of grants as a way to discourage layoffs. We could say fund a percentage of wages for businesses retaining employees and could also have a dissincentive such as making a business pay a certain percentage of wages of employees who they've fired for a couple of months. I think that's probably best dealt with in a seperate bill though, since this is specifically for sick pay.

Also just a sidenote, but the law that this bill it trying to amend hasn't been signed yet which could be an issue. Hopefully it will be soon.

As the bill is drafted, it gives discretion to the administration to create a program as it sees fit. I don't know what criteria to write into the bill - at least yet.

[Leinad]

Grants as a way to discourage layoffs sounds like a good idea. If we're going to make that a separate bill I'm down to just pass this, though. It's very important not to see all local and struggling businesses get wiped out by this, that would be very bad for the owners, consumers, and not to mention everyone employed by such a business.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The RL Phase III bill dealing with this matter is orders of magnitude larger (I think $350 billion or was it $450 billion. I think one number is big and the other is for small but I cannot remember which was which) and they had the grant provision to keep the workforce in tact. I would strongly advise imitating some of the language if one is of a mind to do that.

[Lumine]

Sadly, it seems the GM hasn't been online since the 23rd - I really, really hope he's doing alright and it's nothing serious -, we may have to carry on without GM analysis.

[thumb21]

More Money for Hurting Small Businesses Act.

1. $350,000,000,000 shall be available until expended, that such amounts may be transferred to the Small Business Administration for the cost of direct loans or aid in any fiscal year may be used to make economic injury disaster loans or other aid to small businesses to recoup losses from any government-imposed shutdown.

2. Section 5 of the Coronavirus Containment and Emergency Response Act shall be amended as follows:
Quote
Section 5. Mandatory Medical Paid Leave

(a.) All employed people in Atlasia who have been diagnosed with coronavirus or are caring for family members with coronavirus must receive two-thirds of their wages for up to three months.
(i) For businesses with up to 250 employees, these wage payments shall be paid by the Atlasian federal government.
(ii) For businesses with 251-500 employees, 50% of these wage payments shall be paid by the Atlasian federal government.

[thumb21]

I increased the support much closer to IRL levels, which I believe is $367 billion on offer (unless I'm mistaken). Went slightly less at $350 billion because we have given a lot more support in other areas such as the temporary UBI and working and middle class tax cuts compared to IRL.

[cinyc]

Let's make this a little more like the U.S. Senate bill:

More Money for Hurting Small Businesses Act.

1. $350,000,000,000 shall be available until expended, that such amounts shall be transferred to the Small Business Administration to make economic injury disaster loans to small businesses. The maximum loan amount shall be the lesser of—

(1) the product obtained by multiplying—

(A) the average total monthly payments by the applicant for payroll, mortgage payments, rent payments, and payments on any other debt obligations incurred during the 1 year period before the date on which the loan is made, except that, in the case of an applicant that is seasonal employer, as determined by the Administrator, the average total monthly payments for payroll shall be for the period beginning March 1, 2019 and ending June 30, 2019; by

(B) 4; or

(2) $10,000,000.

An eligible recipient shall be eligible for forgiveness of indebtedness on these loan in an amount equal to the cost of maintaining payroll continuity during the covered period.

2. Section 5 of the Coronavirus Containment and Emergency Response Act shall be amended as follows:

Section 5. Mandatory Medical Paid Leave

(a.) All employed people in Atlasia who have been diagnosed with coronavirus or are caring for family members with coronavirus must receive two-thirds of their wages for up to three months.
(i) For businesses with up to 250 employees, these wage payments shall be paid by the Atlasian federal government.
(ii) For businesses with 251-500 employees, 50% of these wage payments shall be paid by the Atlasian federal government.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

The SBA has some small business statistics published here: https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/23142719/2019-Small-Business-Profiles-US.pdf; am wondering if the current amount allocated might still be too low. (anyone know of any RL cost analysis related to this?)

Did a back-of-the-envelope cost analysis on my own; there are around 5.9 million small businesses with employees, and 5.3 million of those have under 20 employees. Assuming each employee is paid at the national median, and assuming an 'average size' of 5 employees, I get 124 billion in payroll expenses per month. For the 20-499 employee category, and assuming an average size of 50 employees, I get 148 billion per month. This yields a total of 273 billion prior to adding rent/mortgage. Note that this is a monthly figure, while the bill seems to be assuming that the 350 billion will be good for a 4 months. (Edit: misread the bill, last statement is incorrect)

Of course, this is assuming that every business gets the maximum loan amount; under what conditions does a business get less than the maximum amount? I assume this would be up to the SBA?

Also, what is the meaning of 'eligible recipient?' Is an eligible recipient simply any small business that is recognized by the SBA as such?

[cinyc]

The SBA has some small business statistics published here: https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/23142719/2019-Small-Business-Profiles-US.pdf; am wondering if the current amount allocated might still be too low. (anyone know of any RL cost analysis related to this?)

Did a back-of-the-envelope cost analysis on my own; there are around 5.9 million small businesses with employees, and 5.3 million of those have under 20 employees. Assuming each employee is paid at the national median, and assuming an 'average size' of 5 employees, I get 124 billion in payroll expenses per month. For the 20-499 employee category, and assuming an average size of 50 employees, I get 148 billion per month. This yields a total of 273 billion prior to adding rent/mortgage. Note that this is a monthly figure, while the bill seems to be assuming that the 350 billion will be good for a 4 months.

Of course, this is assuming that every business gets the maximum loan amount; under what conditions does a business get less than the maximum amount? I assume this would be up to the SBA?

Also, what is the meaning of 'eligible recipient?' Is an eligible recipient simply any small business that is recognized by the SBA as such?

Eligible recipient, as defined by the Senate bill is basically an eligible borrower who takes out a loan.

(A) ELIGIBLE BORROWER.—The term “eligible borrower” means—

(i) a small business concern; or

(ii) an organization made eligible by subsection (b) of this section for a loan under section 7(a) of the Small Business Act (15 U.S.C. 636(a)).

I didn’t want to get too technical and copy the whole Senate bill.