Democrats Unveil Interim Relief Plan; Lawmaker Pushes for PE Access to PPP Loans

“I think the regulations that make sense in normal times need to be examined … when we’re in a crisis, and whether they’re serving their intended purpose or inhibiting relief that needs to get out,” Gottheimer, a member of the House Financial Services Committee who also co-chairs the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, stated on a Thursday webcast held by the federal policy team at BakerHostetler in Washington.

He emphasized the he led a bipartisan letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnunchin and the Small Business Administration stating that the affiliate rule should be waived.

Private equity firms have warned the White House that their exclusion from the stimulus bill could force them to lay off millions of workers in order to protect their own investments, The Financial Times reported. Some Democrats have argued that private equity firms should support the companies with their own cash, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that the current rules will shut many startups out of the loan program.

Gottheimer added on the Thursday webcast that McConnell’s push failed because “many of us think more money for states and for our hospitals” should be included in another interim stimulus round, “not just PPP because our hospitals are really hurting and they’re spending a lot of money — we need to keep them up.”

Gottheimer added: “There’s a CARES 2 that’s coming; … There’s just a huge demand in our resources for hospitals right now. We’ve done some things to help advance some dollars for them, but we know that they’re going to face very difficult economic times, and already are, in terms of their budgets.”

As to when a phase four stimulus plan could likely get passed, Gottheimer said there “might be a couple salvos back and forth like when we were working on the first CARES package; and frankly we worked on our first two emergency responses, which ended up being bipartisan, but there was a day of negotiating that goes on; you have to have a couple false starts before you get to the finish line. We all recognize we have to get these resources out the door quickly.”