Washington, D.C. – Today, the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) and a coalition of leading business advocacy groups released a letter to Congressional leaders calling for a new phase of federal relief designed to address the continued and prolonged challenges facing small businesses.
While the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provided critical stopgap relief in the early stage of the crisis, small employers face an evolving set of economic disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic that PPP, as currently structured, is not designed to address.
“Federal relief must be responsive to the evolving economic circumstances and needs of small businesses, including nonprofit employers,” the organizations wrote. “The next phase of relief must be designed to enable them to survive a prolonged period of lower consumer demand, ongoing operational disruption, and continued uncertainty until the availability of a vaccine and effective therapeutic treatment eliminate COVID-19 as a severe public health concern. Simply extending PPP and expanding its eligibility to a wider range of severely impacted entities alone is not sufficient to address the threat to small employers throughout the country.”
The letter follows a proposed small business lending facility outlined earlier this year by EIG, calling for the next phase of small business relief to be designed with four core features that build upon the current framework of PPP:
- Zero interest rates,
- Long-term loan maturity,
- Overall administrative simplicity, and
- Flexibility to use the loans to cover a wide range of expenses and to improve the underlying resiliency of the business.
The 25 signatories, which represent many of the industries most deeply impacted by COVID-19, include the American Hotel and Lodging Association, American Mold Builders Association, America’s Recovery Fund Coalition, Angel Capital Association, Asian American Hotel Owners Association, Center for American Entrepreneurship, Economic Innovation Group, Engine, Experiential Designers + Producers Association, Gusto, International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, International Association of Exhibitions and Events, International Franchise Association, Main Street America, National Association of Theatre Owners, National Tooling and Machining Association, North American Die Casting Association, Precision Machined Products Association, Precision Metalforming Association, Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, Small Business for America’s Future, Small Business Majority, Small Business Roundtable, The Payroll Group, and U.S. Travel Association.
A copy of the letter is available here.
About the Economic Innovation Group (EIG)
The Economic Innovation Group (EIG) is an ideas laboratory and advocacy organization whose mission is to advance solutions that empower entrepreneurs and investors to forge a more dynamic American economy. Headquartered in Washington, D.C. and led by an experienced, bipartisan team, EIG convenes leading experts from the public and private sectors, develops original policy research, and works to advance creative legislative proposals that will bring new jobs, investment, and economic growth to communities across the nation. For more information, visit eig.org.
###
