By Senators Michael Bennet and Todd Young This week, 8,706 small business owners from all 50 states wrote to Congress with an urgent message: We are running out of cash and running out of time. Small businesses are the heart of America's economy, but COVID-19 has pushed hundreds of thousands to the brink of failure. Two in three don't have enough cash for three months of expenses. Half say it will take more than six months to fully recover. This is a code red moment for small businesses. It's why nearly 2,000 buildings across the country -- from Seattle's Space Needle to New York's Madison Square Garden -- lit up in red lights earlier this month to underscore the need for urgent action. The action they're all calling for is clear. As Congress negotiates the next relief package, it must pass the RESTART Act. We wrote the RESTART Act to help America's hardest-hit businesses stay afloat and keep workers on the job through the end of the year and into 2021. It's the only bipartisan legislation of its kind -- with 55 Republican and Democratic co-sponsors in the Senate -- and momentum is building across the country. Howard Schultz, former chairman and CEO of Starbucks, led this week's letter that thousands of small business owners and chambers of commerce signed calling for Congress to pass longer-term support like the RESTART Act. Grammy Award-winning artists and musicians are raising awareness around the legislation to save local venues and theaters. Restaurant, brewery, salon, gym, hotel and retail shop owners have all called on Congress to pass RESTART, because they know it is the single best proposal to save their businesses. Previous aid has run out For these hard-hit businesses, federal relief through the Paycheck Protection Program provided a temporary respite. PPP loans covered only eight weeks of costs, a period that has come and gone, while businesses still remain months away from operating at full capacity. Even if Congress includes additional PPP funding in the next relief package, many businesses would still be left in the lurch when that funding runs out at the end of the year. A longer-term solution is needed. Not to mention that due to restrictions in the program, many businesses wouldn't be able to access the new funds. That's why we need RESTART. Our bill would provide the hardest-hit businesses and nonprofits with new loans to cover another six months of operating costs beyond PPP. Part of the loans would be forgiven, based on revenue losses the businesses have suffered. In turn, they would have more time and flexibility to repay the loans. For a retail company in need of working capital to reach full speed, RESTART would help buy inventory, rehire workers, purchase personal protective equipment and serve customers. For a restaurant that can open at only half capacity due to social distancing, RESTART would help it cover fixed costs, including rent, and benefits for each employed and furloughed worker. RESTART would even offer a lifeline to a business like an independent concert venue, which might have to stay shuttered for a longer period and remain unable to generate revenue. Such employers would receive an extended forgiveness period of 12 months so they can stay in business until operations can resume. Provides way back to profitability RESTART recognizes that business decisions are best left to those who run them. It does not impose artificial caps on expenses. Nor does it create arbitrary rehiring timelines. Instead, by tying forgiveness to revenue decline, RESTART would give our hardest-hit businesses a backstop against financial insecurity and a path back to growth and profitability as the economy recovers. Without this kind of support, we risk profound damage to our economy. Half of America's workforce works for a small business, and as many as a quarter of small businesses are at risk of failure. Closures will turn millions of temporary job losses into permanent ones. Now is a moment to listen to the business owners and workers across the country who are urging Congress to provide this relief. Let's act urgently to pass the RESTART Act and help fuel the resurgence of the American economy -- our small businesses don't have any more time to waste.

By U.S. Senator Michael Bennet It is hard to ask someone to socially distance if they have been forced out of their home. But in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century, we risk a new outbreak of evictions as 40 million Americans have lost their jobs and millions more struggle with reduced incomes. Colorado residents are about to face rent due on June 1. Meanwhile, Colorado's eviction moratorium, originally set to end today, lifts in just two weeks. If Congress does not act, data released yesterday by the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project predicts that 416,000 Coloradans could face eviction by the end of September. If Congress does not act, data released just yesterday by the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project predicts that 416,000 Coloradans could face eviction by the end of September. Every person removed from their home is another person forced to double-up with friends or family or crowd into a shelter. And each person who can't pay rent is another hit to the incomes of mom-and-pop landlords and small businesses. As our housing challenges grow, so do the challenges to our public health and economy. To limit these risks, we must directly address the housing crisis in the next relief package. We can start by drawing from proposals in the bipartisan Evictions Crisis Act I introduced with Senator Rob Portman of Ohio in December, which would help families stay in their homes during the pandemic and until they can get back on their feet. Current policies will not be enough. Although federal, state, and local moratoria on evictions and late fees have helped in the short-term, they can't stop an eventual wave of people losing their homes. After all, these limits do not cover all renters, and many who are covered still won't be able to pay the accumulated rent when a moratorium ends. On top of that, many mom-and-pop landlords can't go without monthly rent while these limits remain in effect. For all of these reasons, Congress needs to address the housing crisis in the next emergency package. That should start with at least $100 billion of immediate rental assistance to help low-income Americans and those who have been hit hardest with lost jobs and incomes. We should design this assistance based on our bipartisan Eviction Crisis Act by providing the funding to local governments and nonprofits, which can then use the money to pay the landlords or utility companies directly to cover expenses like unpaid rent and utility bills. For people who have suffered the most severe economic pain from the crisis, we should also provide short-term assistance for at least three months, and for families facing ongoing difficulties, longer-term support for up to two years. At the same time, we should provide at least $20 billion to fight homelessness and expand housing vouchers for those in greatest need, so people can have a stable roof over their heads and can socially distance as the pandemic continues. Finally, we have to do more for state and local governments confronting massive budget shortfalls so they can maintain and expand critical, frontline human services. Making sure the most vulnerable have a stable roof over their heads is not only the right thing to do, it is also critical to protecting our safety and our economy. The last thing our hospitals and communities need is a new wave of families who become needlessly sick because they are forced from their homes and exposed. The last thing our economy needs is a wave of defaults from small landlords and businesses buckling from unpaid rent. As Congress debates the next emergency relief package, we must have the wisdom to see that tackling the housing crisis and the pandemic are not distinct efforts -- they go hand-in-hand.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Bernie Sanders rallied hundreds of supporters outside the New Hampshire capital when the senator formally filed to compete in the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary. A howling crowd cheered South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg as he walked through the statehouse to file his paperwork. When it was Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet’s turn, he wound up with about a dozen supporters and a pep talk from Secretary of State Bill Gardner, the dean of the New Hampshire primary. “Giving the little guy a chance, that’s what it’s about,” Gardner assured Bennet, who sits at about 1% in most polls. Voters cast ballots in less than three months, and the Democratic primary is still crowded with little guys. Roughly a half-dozen candidates in the very bottom tier of the Democratic presidential primary are soldiering on, hoping that even after months of campaigning without catching fire that there’s still a chance. Their resolve reflects, in part, some Democrats’ insistence that the lineup of top contenders is deeply flawed and the race is primed for some late twists and turns. “I truly believe that that person is as likely to be someone polling at 1% today as it is to be the people that are leading in the race today,” Bennet told reporters after filing his paperwork. “Stranger things have happened than that.” Candidates like Bennet have some reason for optimism. Polls show many Democratic voters, even in early-voting states, have not made up their minds. In Iowa, the first state to weigh in, the front of the pack is crowded, another sign of ambiguity, some argue. Worries about the strength of the front-runners prompted Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, to move toward a bid, threatening to expand the field just as the party thought it would be winnowing. Some higher-profile aspirants, including New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand or former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, weren’t able to stick it out, after months of poor polling and lackluster fundraising. Some middle-tier candidates, meanwhile, have had to scale back their operations. California Sen. Kamala Harris pulled staff from New Hampshire this past week, while former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro cut positions there and in early-voting South Carolina. But Bennet and others seemed to have prepared for a long, very slow burn. Bennet and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock never expected to raise much money and built small-scale operations that could carry them until the first part of February, when Iowa and then New Hampshire vote. “Everybody goes up and down, and what I need to be is organizing and catching fire as voting starts,” said Bullock, another candidate mired in the bottom tier who has announced an initial $500,000 advertising campaign in Iowa. Bennet and Bullock stand out in the crowded bottom tier as two well-regarded moderate politicians who got into the race late — in May — and appear to have the same strategy: wait for former Vice President Joe Biden’s support to collapse and hope they’re the best centrist standing. A Bloomberg bid would immediately add another contender — and millions of dollars — to the competition on that front, though the former mayor’s team says he will likely stay out of early states. Other perennial 1% polling candidates have plans that are far less clear. They include spiritualist and best-selling author Marianne Williamson, who moved from Los Angeles to Iowa for the race; former Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak, who just concluded a walk across New Hampshire to attempt to draw attention to his campaign; and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, a wealthy businessman who is self-funding much of his race. Delaney explained his continued campaign with a “why not?” rationale. After millions spent and countless hours of time, “it just seems kind of crazy for me to get out before the caucus,” he said. Looking for hope, Bennet has clung to the example of Gary Hart, a U.S. senator from Colorado who was considered a longshot White House hopeful in 1984 when he stunned the political world by winning New Hampshire. Hart, whose picture is on the wall of Gardner’s office, has endorsed Bennet and recently wrote an opinion piece for USA Today urging people not to write off his younger protege. Hart, however, was not shut out of most of the primary debates, as Bennet and Bullock have been this year. The Democratic National Committee’s increasingly rigorous polling and fundraising criteria are a new attempt to shrink a historically large field. And Hart, in the end, found there were limits to what an underdog can achieve in a presidential primary. He ultimately lost his bid for the nomination to Walter Mondale, the party’s former vice president and heir apparent. (Hart’s 1988 campaign for the nomination was undone by a sex scandal.) Still, Bennet’s team notes that there has been no dominating political presence in their party’s primary, like Mondale or Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were in 2008. “This is the most unsettled field ever,” said Craig Hughes, a top Bennet strategist. “The dynamics are unlike anything we’ve ever seen.” Hughes proudly noted the one sign of movement in the race: The Bennet campaign is shopping for new office space as it expands in New Hampshire. One of the spots it toured last week had just been vacated by the formerly top-tier Harris campaign. __ Riccardi reported from Denver. (c) Associated PressSource: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/