Rep. Chip RoyCompte certifié

On March 27, The senate sent over a $2 trillion #CARESAct that included a provision that paid people more to work than not to work. We didn’t get a chance to amend it, let alone vote on it. Bc government has closed down businesses, we had an obligation to help them bridge the gap

I said I would have supported it w/ strong reservations about its complexity, scope, and a serious concern that an infusion of capital to workers and businesses is only going to be effective if we have a path back to economic function. We did not.

In the coming weeks, we'd start watching our local institutions shut down, many for good. Our neighbors were being laid off. Businesses people spent a decade or more of their lives building were gone for good bc of A) government action and B) no clear end date in sight from govt.

None of that seemed to bug Congress, though. @SpeakerPelosi kept us home for months. There were problems in the CARES Act that needed addressing, there were other pressing issues facing our nation, but we stayed home, watching our communities crumble from our living rooms.

Around the same time, it became clear that the mechanism -- PPP loan program -- we used in CARES to provide relief for small businesses was flawed. I wrote to @stevenmnuchin1 on April 16 requesting some Treasury guidance fixing those problems. None came. https://roy.house.gov/sites/roy.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_uploaded/Ltr%20to%20Treasury%20re%20PPP%20fixes.pdf …