Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy. A 2018 report from the Small Business Administration found that small businesses generated 44 percent of economic activity in the U.S., though that share had declined between 1998 and 2014. As America entered the pandemic in 2020, fresh off of a lost decade for entrepreneurship, small businesses immediately faced unprecedented challenges. In the pandemic’s earliest days, EIG published a proposal to establish a long-term, zero-interest loan program for struggling small businesses. Our Main Street Revitalization proposal gained support from small business stakeholders and industry associations. As Congress worked to establish the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), EIG became a leading resource on the new program and advocated for improvements to make PPP more effective in meeting the needs of small business owners. To that end, EIG led several industry letters to congressional leadership calling on important fixes to PPP, many of which were ultimately passed into law, and additional support for small businesses as the pandemic continued.
