BREAKING: Senate reaches agreement on PPP deal for small businesses, providers, testing. Vote will be today.

I will break it down here. Follow if interested. 1/

Total package now approaches $475 billion. After the initial $250 billion proposal, I predicted $500 billion. Didn’t take a lot of genius.

Here’s the pieces. 2/

Part 1: $310 billion for payroll protection
-Trump/McConnell initial ask was $250 billion
-$60 billion additional set aside for smaller businesses that are unbanked— big Dem priority 3/

Also for businesses — $50 billion in EIDL loans & $10 billion in EIDL grants and some money for SBA to administer it.

It needs to get to the right places! (And not the wrong ones) Hopefully those funds will help to do that. This needs visibility. 4/

Part 2: Hospitals will receive $75 billion on top of the $100 billion in CARES. This should target rural from what I hear. But again there are all kinds of people with outstretched hands here. 5/

Part 3: $25 billion for testing.

If there’s no testing, small business money won’t mean anything because many won’t be able to open or stay open. Here’s the breakdown ...6/

-$11 billion to states
-$14 billion to CDC, BARDA, NIH, NCI (Natl Cancer Institute, who is leading the serology world) plus some for research, development & deployment 7/

On testing, this is a part of a thread last night on what needs to be fixed and who can fix it. 8/

https://twitter.com/aslavitt/status/1252427955139043334?s=21 https://twitter.com/aslavitt/status/1252427955139043334

Even though this is $450 billion, one Senator described it to me as a mini-bill because they are aware of priorities that got left off. 8/

-More state relief
-Money for contact tracing
-Health care coverage
-SNAP and other food relief
-Home & community based care
-Support for health care workers

and a laundry list of other priorities people have 9/

So while there is much to do, they (rightly probably) traded off speed for complexity and size. As it is, just like CARES, this bill got a lot better and was worth the week or so. 10/

Senate plans to convene at 4 to vote. Like all of these things, there are hundreds of details to negotiate & finalize. Either side can walk and likely will. But they will come back & get this done. 11/

I’m jumping on a call with the House now. The next bill is likely to start there. If I learn more, I will add it.

/allfornow