The Senate is likely to vote next week on a $48 billion small-business aid package to help restaurants and bars, buses and ferries, gyms, minor league teams, live event support companies and border-region businesses that saw big revenue losses during the pandemic, the measure’s authors said Wednesday.
The main goal of the bill from Senate Small Business Chairman Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md., and Mississippi GOP Sen. Roger Wicker is to backfill the Restaurant Revitalization Fund for the roughly two-thirds of applicants who didn’t get any grant money under the initial $28.6 billion program. It would provide $40 billion to do that, while a House-passed version had $42 billion.
The other $8 billion in the Senate bill would be divided among select industries: $2 billion each to gyms and live event servicers, like companies that provide staging, lighting, sound and casts for theaters; $2 billion for transportation service providers like buses and ferries; $500 million for minor league sports teams and $1.4 billion for small businesses located near land ports of entry that were closed due to the pandemic.
