Restaurants get big help in stimulus
Restaurants, concert venues and airplane manufacturers all stand to benefit from the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package the Senate approved over the weekend.
They are among the few industries that won targeted help in the massive spending bill. Unlike its predecessor — the $2 trillion CARES Act, which proved a smorgasbord for corporate interests — the latest installment of federal aid focuses on state and local governments, schools, and extra support for individuals.
Lawmakers snubbed a wide array of businesses pleading for help from Washington. Gym operators and long-term senior care facilities are among those arguing Congress has left them facing further closures and layoffs even as the broader economic outlook brightens.
“When you see restaurants continuing to get financial relief and yet those on the front lines of caring for the most vulnerable in this crisis are left out, I struggle with that,” said James Balda, president of Argentum, an association representing companies that run senior living facilities. His group unsuccessfully pushed for $5 billion in federal aid for the sector.
The mammoth bill approved
by the Senate on Saturday would provide direct payments of $1,400 to most Americans, extend jobless benefits, and provide a huge financial infusion to state and local governments and schools to help them reopen.
It provides funding for priorities like coronavirus testing and vaccine distribution.
It amounts to an ambitious anti-poverty program, offering significant benefits for low-income people.
And it will send billions to American businesses.
“The hope is by spring and early summer, things will have started to normalize, so businesses won’t need a ton more aid,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The bill, he said, “reflects a shift toward focusing on making sure households and state and local governments are in good shape, rather than specific industries or the business sector broadly.”
Against that backdrop, the handful of interests that secured billions of dollars in new funding stand out.
The restaurant industry emerged as the bill’s biggest private-sector winner. The package establishes a $25 billion “revitalization fund” for restaurants that will dole out grants to help them cover pandemic-related revenue losses, with businesses eligible for up to $5 million each.
Sean Kennedy, the NationalRestaurant Association’s vice president for public affairs, called the fund the “the culmination of a oneyear effort” to secure a dedicated pot of money for the sector. But it has racked up a series of smaller lobbying victories in pandemic relief measures, including a carve-out in the Payroll Protection Program that granted restaurants a higher loan limit than other businesses.