News & Media
Coronavirus April 7 Update: GOP Senators on the Next Aid Package, Celebrity Chefs, Restaurants Seek Relief, and Immigration Policies Delay Foreign Medical Grads
GOP senators: Next coronavirus aid package may need unanimous consent
A pair of Senate Republican appropriators suggested Monday that it would be difficult to envision lawmakers returning to the Capitol for votes on the next round of coronavirus aid any time soon.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has focused on providing payroll assistance to small businesses as chairman of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, said it is almost inevitable the federal assistance programs will need more money.
“The appetite is there. I think everyone I’ve talked to in the Senate recognizes we’re going to have to go back and do more, and probably more than once,” he said in a CNBC interview.
But Rubio indicated that any action taken in the immediate future may require consent of the entire Senate. “The bigger challenge is logistical, and that is how do you get over 500 members of Congress back to Washington to take a vote in the House and Senate? It would almost have to be structured as something that’s voted on unanimously in both chambers,” he said. “It’s going to be very difficult logistically to . . . get everyone back there, especially given the uptick in the infection rate in the D.C. area.”
Rubio cautioned that while there would be widespread support for additional assistance, if needed, there’s always a risk that it may not be unanimous.
“You can pass things in the Senate with only two people there,” he said, referring to the chamber’s unanimous consent process. “If you wanted to go back and just add more money, you could pretty quickly do that with two people there.”
“The question becomes, in the Senate, if one single senator objects, that becomes impossible,” he added.
The next time all senators are expected in Washington for voting is on April 20. Read the full story on RollCall.com.
Chefs, restaurants set menu for next economic rescue bill
The $2.3 trillion economic rescue package enacted by Congress provides an inadequate lifeline for independent restaurants, ranging from celebrity chef-driven culinary destinations to lesser-known family-run eating establishments, leaders of a new food industry coalition said Monday.
Restaurateurs Tom Colicchio of New York, Kwame Onwuachi of Washington, D.C., and Naomi Pomeroy of Portland, Oregon, said the package’s forgivable loans for small businesses end too soon and won’t help them reopen for business once COVID-19 restrictions on sit-down dining are lifted.
“This is our generation’s World War II. We need to get our arms around it and work together,” Colicchio said.
In a conference call, the three award-winning chefs said that before COVID-19 struck, the independent restaurant industry employed 11 million people in the U.S. and supported thousands of suppliers such as wine and food vendors.
The chefs said the Independent Restaurant Association is calling for more targeted aid to smaller restaurants that addresses the realities of running labor-intensive businesses with small profit margins. The association was formed in March as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate and House leaders negotiated the wide-ranging legislation designed to aid industries reeling from public health guidelines that have restricted gatherings, closed businesses and kept millions of people at home.
Pomeroy said most association members had already closed and laid off staff by the time Congress passed the legislation.
“CARES is a small step on a giant staircase,” Onwuachi said, referring to the law by its acronym, which stands for Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.
The association laid out other steps that members deem necessary to help restaurants rebound in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
The letter calls for:
- Extending the maximum loan amounts available to smaller restaurants under the Paycheck Protection Program to three months after the businesses are allowed to reopen and operate at full capacity.
- Creating a revenue stabilization fund of $50 billion to $100 billion to help independent restaurants pay vendors, cover reopening costs and rehire workers.
- Providing a tax rebate to restaurants based on how many people they hire and a rent rebate to provide landlords with revenue until restaurant tenants recover financially.
- Requiring insurance companies that provide coverage for business interruptions to recognize COVID-19 public health closures as a payable event.
- Extending the two-year repayment period to 10 years for businesses that do not qualify for loan forgiveness under the Paycheck Protection Program.
Workers affected by COVID-19 strike for better health and safety protections
Warehouse and delivery workers at Amazon went on strike at a Staten Island warehouse, demanding better safety protocols to shield against COVID-19 exposure.
More than 50 Amazon facilities in the United States have seen positive cases, according to press reports, and this is the second worker strike in New York in two weeks. Workers have also gone on strike in Chicago and Detroit.
In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear closed a warehouse where three workers had tested positive for COVID-19. Employees at Instacart also went on strike last week to demand hazard pay and safety protections during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Department of Labor's Occupational Health and Safety Administration made a poster available on Monday with tips for workplaces to reduce the risk of exposure to coronavirus. OSHA published guidance in March recommending staggering shifts, discouraging the shared use of equipment, and sanitizing with EPA-approved cleaning chemicals. In March, the Trump administration made a recommendation that so-called "critical infrastructure" employees should report to work after COVID-19 exposure.
Immigration policies may delay help from foreign medical grads
More than 4,000 foreign medical graduate students are scheduled to begin U.S. residency programs this summer, but experts fear current immigration policies will delay their arrivals — and their ability to help doctors combat the coronavirus pandemic.
Last month, the Trump administration barred most foreign travel to the United States amid the current health crisis. Many of those flights, however, would have included medical teachers and recent medical graduates arriving with J-1 visas as part of a cultural exchange program.
“If all of these international doctors or a large number of them are unable to arrive here and become part of their training program, it will definitely further stress health care systems and people’s access to proper health care,” William W. Pinsky, CEO of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, told CQ Roll Call.
Pinksy’s commission is the sole organization sponsoring foreign medical graduate students who have J-1 non-immigrant visas, which are granted for work- and study-based exchange programs. J-1s usually are allocated to interns, teachers and foreign medical graduates who have been accepted into a U.S. residency program.
But J-1 visa holders are not allowed to arrive in the United States more than 30 days before their program begins, which is July 1 for nearly all medical residency programs.
Some immigration attorneys want the Trump administration to ease this restriction to give students ample time to prepare for their program, especially if they need to undergo a 14-day or longer self-quarantine after coming from Italy, China or another nation with high cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“The solution here is to process them earlier and get them here before their July 1” start date, Greg Siskind, an immigration attorney who specializes in visas for foreign physicians, told CQ Roll Call.
He said the State Department “needs to make it very clear that they are prepared to process these people faster than normal,” if that’s something it decides to do. Read the full story on RollCall.com.