WASHINGTON – Sens. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) today introduced the Protecting Access to Credit for Small Businesses Act to stop Democrats from turning the Small Business Administration (SBA) into a direct lender for the 7(a) program through their partisan spending plan.
“Fraud and inefficiency characterize the Small Business Administration’s history in direct lending. The government shouldn’t encroach on a space where private lenders are already doing a good job getting funds to the small businesses that need them. I’m proud to partner with Sen. Scott to stop the SBA from replacing community and other private lenders with bureaucrats,” said Kennedy.
“Forcing community banks and local credit unions to compete with a massive government agency is inefficient and wrong. Funneling tax dollars through the federal government in order to loan it back to small business owners with interest makes no sense. This is just another example of Democrats’ misguided plan for a big government takeover of virtually every aspect of American life and private institutions,” said Scott.
The Protecting Access to Credit for Small Businesses Act would block the SBA from issuing direct 7(a) loans.
Background
- In October, Kennedy sent a letter to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House and Senate Small Business Committee Chairs Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) warning against their plan to make the SBA a direct lender.
- The SBA Office of the Inspector General estimates that the federal government’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program issued $79 billion in potentially fraudulent loans. The EIDL program was rife with fraud and unnecessary delays throughout the pandemic.
- The American Bankers Association, Consumer Bankers Association, Independent Community Bankers of America, Bank Policy Institute, Credit Union National Association and National Association of Federally Insured Credit Unions support the Protecting Access to Credit for Small Businesses Act.
Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Pat Toomey (R-Penn.), John Thune (R-N.D), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Steve Daines (R- Mont.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) also cosponsored the legislation.
WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today wrote to Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Director Michael Carvajal demanding answers about staffing shortages in Federal Correction Complexes (FCC) in Pollock and Oakdale, La. FCC Pollock and FCC Oakdale have experienced staffing shortages that have been exasperated by COVID-19, and the BOP director has failed to respond to Kennedy’s formal questions (QFRs) about the shortages.
“As of the date of this letter, I have not received a response from you. In other words, QFRs have remained unanswered for eight months. This is unacceptable. . . . Federal agencies must respond to congressional inquiries in a timely way. As a result of your failure to respond, the staffing crisis at FCC Oakdale has actually gone from bad to worse since the Judiciary Committee held the BOP oversight hearing earlier this year,” Kennedy wrote.
“Our men and women in law enforcement, including those working some of the most dangerous jobs in our federal prisons, must have every resource available to them to ensure their safety. Sufficient staffing levels are crucial to that safety. To that end, I ask that you respond to this letter by December 31, 2021, with the date that the BOP will restore FCC Oakdale to its 2016 staffing levels, per the direction of Congress,” Kennedy concluded.
To meet custody requirements in the wake of staffing shortages, these facilities have had to pay increased overtime and siphon personnel from other departments to increase the number of guards on duty.
The BOP has also ordered FCC Oakdale to reduce existing staff levels to 93 percent of current levels, even though it has lost personnel because of President Biden’s vaccine mandate. If this reduction occurs, the facility will have approximately 120 fewer personnel than it did in 2016, which is the level Congress has funded and required the facility to maintain.
Text of the letter is available here.
WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) today joined Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and nine other Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee in writing to Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) requesting a full committee hearing in Washington, D.C. to address the rising crime wave.
The senators wrote the letter after Durbin held a hearing titled “Combating Gun Trafficking and Reducing Violence in Chicago” in Chicago, Ill. on Dec. 13. The senators previously requested that Durbin allow virtual or phone participation in that hearing, but the chairman denied this request.
“Beginning in the summer of 2020, the country has experienced a sustained and unprecedented 30% increase in murders. This spike has correlated with a move toward depolicing, after the eruption of over 500 riots nationally,” the senators wrote.
“In June of 2021, the Biden Administration unveiled its own strategy to reduce violent crime. We were troubled to see how much of the President’s strategy focuses on lawful gun acquisition and lawful gun owners. For example, one of the tenets of the President’s plan is finding ways to sue legal gun manufacturers, an initiative that would do much to interfere with Americans’ access to guns but nothing to target murders or reduce crime. . . . Legally owned firearms play an important role in allowing Americans to protect themselves during a violent crime surge. A 2013 CDC-commissioned study found that as many as millions of people a year defend themselves with a firearm,” they continued.
“We therefore request that you hold a full committee hearing in Washington, D.C. on the spike in murders and the challenges that law enforcement is facing. Ineffective bail policies, cumbersome restraints on police officers, and the impact of the ‘progressive prosecutor’ movement are exacerbating this surge. While it would have been helpful to explore the effects of these factors on crime in Chicago, given the many other cities that are impacted by the crime surge, we believe it would be even more useful if we could explore these problems on a national scale with the full committee,” concluded the senators.
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) also signed the letter.
The letter is available here.
Kennedy, Risch, Hickenlooper introduce bill to simplify loan applications for small businesses
Dec 09 2021
WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) today joined Sens. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) in introducing the Streamlining EIDL Act to improve the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) application process for small businesses and to fight fraud in the program.
“Louisiana’s small businesses contend with enough adversity as it is. They don’t need bureaucracy to make it harder to get straight answers on their EIDL applications or to combat fraud. I’m thankful to work with Sens. Risch and Hickenlooper to improve the EIDL program so that small businesses can get back to investing in their communities,” said Kennedy.
“Small businesses in Idaho have struggled to get meaningful answers on their EIDL applications from the SBA. They’ve been forced to submit the same document multiple times, received vague and ambiguous responses from the agency, and in some cases, had to contend with fraudsters submitting false applications on their behalf. Small businesses deserve a program that actually functions the way it should, and the Streamlining EIDL Act will go a long way to fix the flaws in the EIDL application process and make these disaster loans accessible to small businesses,” said Risch.
“Economic Injury Disaster Loans have been a lifeline for small businesses throughout the pandemic. This bill will help businesses stay open and prevent fraud, a win-win,” said Hickenlooper.
Applicants to the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) EIDL program often experience a lag in the application process because of slow and unorganized review procedures. Applicants also have to contend with fraudulent applications submitted in their names.
The Streamlining EIDL Act would:
- Impose deadlines on the EIDL program application process,
- Require the SBA to conduct a comprehensive review of the process for submitting EIDL applications,
- Direct the SBA to submit a report to Congress detailing steps it has taken to correct how it has handled identity theft cases, and
- Require the SBA to report how it has recovered improper payments and how it is reconciling previous identity theft allegations with newly filed identity theft allegations.
Sens. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) also cosponsored the legislation.
Text of the Streamlining EIDL Act is available here.
WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) today introduced the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Impact Act to study the impact of RSV, which can be serious for infants and older adults.
“RSV causes tens of thousands of hospitalizations each year. When young children get sick, their parents often struggle to balance caring for their kids at home and meeting goals at work. I introduced the RSV Impact Act to give us insight into how we can better protect against this illness and help families recover from it,” said Kennedy.
RSV leads to mild symptoms for most individuals who contract it, but the virus can seriously impact infants and the elderly in particular. Annually in the U.S., RSV leads to nearly 2.1 million outpatient visits and 58,000 hospitalizations for children under five years old.
Parents have reported high stress levels, poor health and lost productivity at work as a result of caring for children who contract RSV.
The RSV Impact Act would require the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to study RSV transmission in schools and day cares and the impact this virus has on the domestic economy, particularly on parents who have to miss work. The bill would require the Academy to send a report of its findings to Congress.
Text of the RSV Impact Act is available here.
WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today announced $78,692,355 in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grants for Louisiana to address damage caused by Hurricanes Laura, Delta and Ida.
“Louisianians have suffered so much as a result of destructive hurricanes the last year and a half. They’ve remained strong and resilient like always, but they still need help, and this $78.7 million will help us recover from some of the enormous costs we’ve had to bear,” said Kennedy.
The FEMA aid will fund the following:
- $34,621,295 to the Jefferson Davis Electric Cooperative for emergency protective measures related to Hurricane Laura.
- $8,572,317 to the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development for emergency protective measures related to Hurricane Laura.
- $7,747,884 to the Louisiana Department of Military for emergency protective measures related to Hurricane Ida.
- $7,446,887 to St. John the Baptist Parish for debris removal related to Hurricane Ida.
- $6,523,262 to the Calcasieu Parish School Board for management costs related to Hurricane Laura.
- $5,009,266 for Public Assistance debris removal of debris caused by Hurricane Laura in Lake Charles.
- $3,609,555 to remove debris caused by Hurricane Laura in Lake Charles.
- $3,579,725 to the Lafayette Parish Consolidated Government for permanent work repairs to the Lafayette Utilities System, which was damaged by Hurricane Delta.
- $1,582,164 to the Society of the Roman Catholic Church of the Diocese of Lake Charles for temporary facilities related to Hurricane Laura.
Watch Kennedy’s comments here.
WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) today introduced and asked the Senate to pass the Protecting the American Taxpayer and Medicare Act, which would protect Medicare and other mandatory spending programs from planned sequestrations without raising the federal debt limit. Sen. Wyden (D-Ore.) blocked the bill’s passage.
“Americans depend on Medicare, especially while we’re still recovering from the pandemic. This bill would protect Medicare and other crucial programs from harmful cuts without enabling Pres. Biden’s Build Back Broker agenda. If Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling to fund trillions of dollars in extra spending while inflation is ravaging American families, they can do it themselves,” said Kennedy.
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have cosponsored the legislation.
The Protecting the American Taxpayer and Medicare Act would:
- Delay the planned two percent Medicare sequester payment reductions that are scheduled to begin on Jan. 1, 2022.
- Waive Congress’s Pay-As-You-Go rule until 2023, which would prevent sequestration for all mandatory spending programs in 2022. This includes cuts to agricultural programs like Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage.
- Continue the three percent increase to Medicare physicians through Dec. 31, 2022 to help providers care for patients in the wake of the pandemic.
- Delay reductions in Medicare payments to clinical laboratory fees through Dec. 31, 2022 to preserve access to testing and laboratory services.
- Delay the implementation of the Medicare radiation oncology model through Dec. 31, 2022 to ensure access to care for cancer patients.
- Provide $45 million in savings to the Medicare Improvement Fund, for a total balance of $101 million.
Failure to waive the Pay-As-You-Go rule would result in $9.4 billion in cuts to Medicare hospital providers in 2022. Cuts to Medicare overall would be $36 billion, or a four percent reduction.
Some senators want to tie Medicare protections to a measure increasing the debt ceiling by a fixed dollar amount, even though Senate Democrats can address the debt ceiling themselves through the reconciliation process. Kennedy’s legislation would protect Medicare from sequestrations without also raising the debt ceiling.
Text of the Protecting the American Taxpayer and Medicare Act is available here.
Watch Kennedy’s comments here.
WASHINGTON – The Senate today passed a bipartisan resolution to nullify President Biden’s vaccine mandate on private employees with support from Sens. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.). All other Senate Republicans as well as Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) voted in favor of the resolution.
The resolution would invalidate the mandate under the Congressional Review Act, which is the official Congressional process for eliminating an executive branch rule.
“Vaccines can be a blessing, but Pres. Biden’s vaccine mandate is a major threat to every American’s liberty. The president’s power grab contradicts his earlier promise that he wouldn’t impose such a mandate. I’m proud to help reverse this bureaucratic overreach and hope the House follows suit soon,” said Kennedy.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a rule to officially mandate vaccination requirements for employees at private businesses with more than 100 employees. The rule would affect more than 80 million Americans.
The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to overturn certain federal agency regulations and actions through a joint resolution of disapproval. If such a joint resolution is approved by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, or if Congress successfully overrides a presidential veto, the rule at issue becomes invalid.WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and every Republican member of the committee urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to withdraw his memo directing the FBI to investigate parents, making it clear that federal law enforcement does not equate concerned parents with domestic terrorists.
“In light of a disturbing new revelation about the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division following your directive, we call on you to withdraw your October 4 memorandum and make abundantly clear through words and actions that no arm of the government, including the offices under your command, may be used to chill criticism of local government officials,” the senators wrote.
“Parents and other citizens who get impassioned at school-board meetings are not domestic terrorists. You may believe that, but too many people involved in this issue seem to think harsh words can be criminalized. Getting the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division involved in the matter only makes this worse—dramatically worse. Therefore, we call on you to work with us in coming to a resolution on this matter,” the senators concluded.
The full letter is available here.
Kennedy, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and the nine other Republican Judiciary Committee members also wrote a letter to Garland on Oct. 7 condemning his Oct. 4 memo and demanding that the DOJ not threaten parents’ free speech.
Watch Kennedy’s Oct. 27 questioning of Garland about his memo here.
WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) penned this op-ed for Roll Call outlining how nuclear power can serve as a clean, powerful energy source that can help America defend against China’s authoritarian advance.
“Louisianians are facing rising energy prices at the same time as falling temperatures this winter. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is pursuing policies that would further cripple the U.S. energy industry and the economy that depends on it, like flirting with shuttering the Line 5 pipeline.
“Our chief executive wants to shackle America with climate commitments that could make life unnecessarily hard for Americans struggling to pay energy bills under record inflation. At the same time, China, led by Xi Jinping—who, along with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, didn’t even bother to attend the recent Glasgow climate summit—continues to churn out carbon emissions that surpass those of the entire developed world, and Beijing’s authoritarian regime is gunning to outpace our economy.
“How can America pursue wise climate policies without hamstringing our economy in the face of a predatory China? If someone asked the president or some of my colleagues in Congress what they think the solution to climate change is, many of them would respond, ‘Renewable energy.’ It seems curious and inconsistent, then, that so many of them shun nuclear energy when it’s a safe, carbon-free option that yields enormous amounts of electricity. Wisdom and data suggest that America needs an all-of-the-above approach to energy, one that includes renewables, fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
“Nuclear energy is so clean that all the waste America’s commercial nuclear industry ever produced can fit into a single football field to a depth of fewer than 10 yards. It’s also incredibly efficient. It takes more than 3 million solar panels or more than 430 wind turbines—and the acres of land needed to host them—to produce the same amount of power as the average nuclear plant.
“Some may think nuclear energy’s advantages aren’t worth the risk. But Homer Simpson doesn’t run America’s power plants, and the industry has continuously evolved to make plants safer and more efficient.
“Small modular reactors, for example, are part of a promising new generation of advanced reactors that can automatically avoid overheating. These nuclear fission devices, which can be manufactured in a plant and brought to a site for installation, have a smaller physical footprint, and they produce less nuclear waste because they get more output from nuclear fuel. Some of these reactors are only about twice the length of the average school bus, while a traditional nuclear plant is roughly the size of Central Park.
“The innovation doesn’t stop with small modular reactors. MIT researchers are planning to build a reactor that would generate energy the same way the sun does—through nuclear fusion. Compared with traditional fission plants, the waste produced during nuclear fusion is less radioactive, and the raw ingredients that fuel fusion are more abundant than uranium.
“Fossil fuels, of course, are still a key part of America’s success. America’s economy is the largest in the world, and it can’t run without oil and gas. Eighty percent of America’s energy is from fossil fuels. Those resources support millions of U.S. jobs, and those jobs help make energy affordable for all Americans.
“Nuclear power adds to our country’s legacy of affordable, sustainable energy. Anyone who wants to grow America’s economy and safeguard the environment shouldn’t overlook the power of the atom. If nuclear energy doesn’t play a leading role in the U.S. energy portfolio, we will find it hard to maintain our place as a global leader because China’s polluting authoritarian regime is positioning itself to take over the global economy.
“Without safe, efficient fuel options like nuclear energy to power America through the 21st century, the world could quickly become a darker, dirtier place. People on both ends of the political spectrum should be able to see this threat and agree that nuclear energy must be part of any serious solution.”
The op-ed is available here.
