Following the passage of the latest federal COVID-19 relief bill, $284 billion will be made available to businesses in the new Paycheck Protection Program as of Friday.
On Thursday, U.S. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan held a virtual panel with state business leaders to explain how the program, dubbed by many as PPP 2, will be rolled out for small businesses and nonprofits.
PPP 2 attempts to prioritize directing financial relief to small businesses. Over the summer, one of the major complaints with the first PPP over was larger businesses, multinational corporations and tax-exempt organizations, like churches, obtained hundreds of millions of relief funds while many small businesses were left with inadequate aid relative to the financial losses they endured due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I view this package as a short-term, emergency proposal to get us through the next couple months until the new Congress and the next administration can get up and running,” Shaheen said Thursday. “Then, we can look at what longer-term needs to be done to get ahead of this coronavirus, which really is key, and then to get the economy up and running again and make sure our small businesses survive.”
To read the full story, go to www.seacoastonline.com.