Coloradans are fortunate to have a hard-working, citizen legislature.
While Congress has dithered away precious months, Gov. Jared Polis called an emergency legislative session amidst a third wave of the pandemic to hammer out a series of relief bills that will help bridge the gap for small businesses and families until Congress passes another tranche of coronavirus relief.
The suite of bills passed in three days by the General Assembly is not nearly enough, but the funds being distributed must be within the bounds of Colorado’s balanced budget, so lawmakers did the best with what they had.
And that is this certainly better than the absolute nothing Congress has done for hurting Coloradans since it last passed a relief bill in March.
We are particularly encouraged that restaurants and bars will be getting immediate relief — keeping the state-portion of sales taxes they collected in November and what they collect in the next several months. Our concerns that relief would not come soon enough to struggling businesses were alleviated by the immediacy of these restaurants and bars being able to retain up to $2,000 of November state sales taxes collected.
We hope this small amount of aid will help businesses on the brink of permanent closure, however, we know Congress must act quickly to bring more aid to these employers.
Wisely, Colorado lawmakers spread the limited resources they had far and wide.
Before the session even began, Polis had set the wheels in motion so that Coloradans who had recently filed for unemployment would receive one-time state payments of $375. Those payments are already rolling out, in time to help out-of-work or underemployed Coloradans before the holidays.
And now the 10 bills passed under the leadership of Speaker of the House K.C. Becker, Senate President Leroy Garcia and Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert will add utility, rent and loss-of-rental income assistance for those in need; grants for food pantries; and money for the Department of Education to dole out to help with online and technology connectivity for virtual school.
Another $57 million is going to direct-payment relief money for small businesses and arts organizations.
Again, the total amount lawmakers had to work with was small, less than $350 million, but the point is they did something and for many people, it will make life easier for the next two or three months.
Congress has resources, and an ability to carry debt that far exceeds that of Colorado, and yet they have failed to lift a finger since March to assist with this pandemic. The blame doesn’t all fall on Republicans in the Senate who are opposed to deficit spending either, as Democrats in the Senate have killed sensible stand-alone bills allocating money for additional rounds of Paycheck Protection Program that provides loans to businesses for payroll and overhead. But there’s a general unwillingness to negotiate on behalf of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who has expressed just this week opposition to a bipartisan $1 trillion package gaining steam with members in both chambers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi supports such a measure but has been unwilling to send stand-alone bills, such as extending unemployment assistance, to the Senate where they would likely pass.
This is all extremely frustrating, and we can only conclude that new leadership is needed in Congress. Perhaps Coloradans need to be running the show in Washington to show them how it’s done.
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