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Dear Friends,
I am supporting our communities during this public health and economic crisis.
Today, I voted to secure an additional $310 billion in funding for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). This program was created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and provides 100% federally guaranteed loans to small businesses and nonprofits through local banks.
To watch my speech on the House Floor in support of the Paycheck Protection Increase Act, click HERE or on the image below.
The PPP loans have helped Arkansas businesses and nonprofits retain their employees and keep their businesses functioning during the current public health crisis.
Unfortunately, the PPP ran out of its initial funding of $350 billion, leaving more than 13,000 pending PPP loan applications representing over $1.1 billion for Arkansas.
Increasing the funding for the PPP is the right thing because it will give a lifeline to employees and businesses throughout Arkansas.
Already, our state has benefitted from 21,000 loans totaling more than $2.7 billion, and for the hardworking Arkansans whose livelihoods have been impacted by the COVID-19 public health and economic crisis.
The stories I have heard from businesses and bankers across Arkansas speak for themselves. HERE and below are some of those stories.
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My friend, FNBC Bank President Marty Sellars, in Ash Flat, told me that he’s made $9 million in loans to 80 customers and that he felt that he’s helped save almost a thousand employees in his part of Arkansas.
Arvest Bank tells the story of helping two eye clinics in Northeast Arkansas with three locations, enabling them to keep their staff paid and functioning during the next few weeks of uncertainty.
Simmons Bank in central Arkansas made available nearly $200,000 to the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, which will allow Arkansas’s largest and only statewide anti-hunger organization to keep all 17 of their staff on payroll and continue to serve Arkansas families during this critical time where we have to have our hunger relief efforts at top speed.
Without EIDL and PPP loans, millions of Americans would be out of work, which is why it’s unacceptable that these successful and bipartisan programs ran out of money.
After the passage of this important package I am confident that our employers and our consumers will prudently be able to combine common sense and follow the CDC precautions and get back to work; back to seeing patients; back to the barbershop; back to their faith communities; and back to some semblance of normalcy.
Americans always come together in times of crisis, and we will defeat this virus, and get our economy back to full capacity.
Sincerely,
Representative French Hill
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