This afternoon the Senate passed a $484 billion aid package, which will provide relief for small businesses, as well as funding for hospitals and COVID-19 testing.
The House is expected to reconvene in Washington, DC and pass the legislation on Thursday.
As noted this morning, negotiators had been working to reach an agreement on the next COVID-19-related bill, scheduling a Senate session for this afternoon. A deal has officially been reached on the legislation.
The $484-billion measure includes, among other provisions:
The bill does not include any additional funds for states and localities.
Senate Democrats are calling this package an “interim” measure, fully expecting to take up a “Phase 4” bill later this spring.
The Senate is scheduled to meet at 4 PM EDT with the hopes of passing the bill by unanimous consent.
The Senate is scheduled to come into session at 4 PM ET today, signaling that the Administration and Congressional Democrats have almost finalized a deal on a supplement package to “Phase 3,” the CARES Act. The legislation that was being hammered out overnight is approximately $500 billion in total and was prompted primarily by the program designed to help small businesses in the CARES Act running out of money.
This new bill includes an infusion of approximately $300 billion for the small business program and includes, among other provisions, additional funds for hospitals and to expand testing capabilities. While there is no new funding for states and localities, it does allow for more flexibility for those entities to use the $150 billion they received in CARES.
Anticipating Senate passage, the House leadership has alerted House members that a vote could take place on the measure on Thursday, allowing enough time for them to get back to D.C. Like the vote on the CARES Act, which could not be passed by “unanimous consent” because of an objection, a recorded vote on this measure may be needed as well.
Read more about the developments in the Washington Post and here in Politico.
Even with this package being finalized, conversations about a “Phase 4” bill are still taking place.
On top of the proposals aimed at direct institutional and student needs as well as needs in the research arena, the higher education community has also pulled together a set of tax proposals that seeks to address additional challenges.
One of the top priorities in the package is the request that public entities, including public universities, become eligible to take advantage of the tax credits available to employers that provide paid sick and emergency family and medical leave for employees who are facing COVID-19-related issues. “Phase 2” required all public employers as well as private employers with fewer than 500 employees to provide paid sick and emergency family and medical leave. At the same time, the bill created tax credits for the same set of private sector employers but explicitly prohibited public employers from being eligible for the credits.
As the push for a “Phase 4” coronavirus bill gains steam, the higher education community has come up with a set of requests for the still-developing package, some of which would augment provisions in “Phase 3” while others would create new sources of funding.
The broader higher education community is jointly advocating for this proposal, which would add approximately $47 billion to the Higher Education Fund that was created in the $2.2-trillion CARES Act. The request is based on a set of assumptions that the community made in order to craft a timely proposal.
The research university community is making another push for research funding in a Phase 4 package. In an effort to address a portion of the problems being caused by the pandemic, the group proposal calls for, among other items, $26 billion in the next legislative package to address the various needs in the research enterprise.