Thursday was a one-two punch in the gut for the economy.
Just hours after the U.S. Department of Labor announced that over five million Americans lost their jobs in the past week, the federal government’s fund to keep small businesses afloat — considered Washington’s key measure to keep people employed — ran out of money after just two weeks of operation.
That initiative, called the Paycheck Protection Program, will likely be shuttered for business for days, as congressional Democrats refuse to accept a refill of the program’s coffers unless Republicans agree to pair it with new funding for the country’s hard-hit hospitals and state governments, which are similarly struggling to stay above water.
Amid another day of a familiar Washington split-screen — lawmakers torching each other before retreating to negotiate behind closed doors — the people whose lives and livelihoods are riding on the outcome of the political theater are watching anxiously from hundreds and thousands of miles away, wondering if the country’s leaders are able to meet a crisis of staggering scale.
Asked what small businesses in Arizona need, Jess Roman’s answer was brief: “The simple answer is money.”
Roman, the interim CEO of the Arizona Small Business Association, told The Daily Beast on Thursday that his group just conducted a survey of businesses in the state that have filed for relief under the PPP, which is a government loan to keep workers on payroll that doesn’t need to be paid back. He expected most filers to be newer and less stable enterprises, but when the results came in, he was shocked at how many of the businesses seeking relief had been around for over a decade and had more than 10 employees. “That’s tough stuff,” he said.
The news out of Washington that day didn’t make it any easier. “Now you’re reading in the paper that Democrats and Republicans are once again fighting and because of that, everything’s being held up,” said Roman. “You just can’t be very hopeful about Washington.”
Small business advocates hope to see the relief funds replenished immediately, with or without the items Democrats demand…
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