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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) yesterday asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to resume talks on a multi-trillion-dollar stimulus package for the U.S. economy, Bloomberg News reported. “We were encouraged by your comments shortly after the election that you believe the Congress needs to act on another COVID-19 relief package and that ‘it’s a possibility we will do more for state and local governments,’” they wrote in a letter to the Republican leader. “We agree with you.” Pelosi and Schumer asked that McConnell join them at the negotiating table this week “so that we can work towards a bipartisan, bicameral COVID-19 relief agreement to crush the virus and save American lives.” The letter comes as the White House and President Donald Trump have pulled back from their involvement in the stalled stimulus negotiations after offering to back a $1.9 trillion package before the Nov. 3 election. Democrats have been demanding a $2.4 trillion package, and McConnell has called for “targeted” relief in the $500 billion range. Read more. 

In related news, President-elect Joe Biden on Monday urged Congress to immediately pass an economic relief package as he warned that the coronavirus pandemic will worsen in the coming months, the Washington Post reported. Federal help can ease the pain for workers and employers as the virus surges across the country, Biden said as he and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris expressed optimism that businesses and labor unions are ready to work together to reboot the economy. The holdup is Congress, Biden said, as he criticized Democrats along with Republicans for inaction this fall. Biden called on Congress to pass a large package approved by House Democrats earlier this year and said they cannot wait any longer to act. He suggested that the economic relief needs to be approved during the lame-duck session of Congress while Trump is still in the White House. Read more.

The single-family house on Forestview Avenue in Euclid, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, shows no signs of farming activity. The only things growing on the one-eighth-acre plot are trees, shrubs and grass. But 20 companies registered at that address, with names like Organic Ohio Berries LLC and Garlic Farming LLC, have won government approval for loans and grants intended to support small businesses hurt by the pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. In all, the owner of the Forestview home and his family members created 72 companies with agrarian-sounding names at three Cleveland-area addresses and then used them to get approval for loans and grants totaling $7.2 million from the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, state and federal records show. There’s no sign of agricultural activity at any of the locations, or that any of the companies were active before Feb. 1, a requirement for pandemic aid. None of them was registered with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office before May. A lawyer for Zaur Kalantarli, the owner of the Forestview house, acknowledged in an interview this week that at least some of the loans were questionable and may have to be repaid. The lawyer, Edward La Rue of Cleveland, said that he contacted federal prosecutors in Ohio on Monday and brought the matter to their attention. La Rue said Kalantarli hired him on Nov. 12 after an inquiry from Bloomberg News. The disaster-relief program has distributed 3.6 million loans worth $192 billion to small businesses since March, as well as 5.8 million grants that don’t have to be repaid totaling $20 billion. It’s distinct from the SBA’s $525 billion Paycheck Protection Program, which relied on banks to distribute forgivable loans meant to cover payroll. A $750 million computer program set up by the SBA in April was supposed to flag suspicious disaster-aid applications before they were approved, but last month Bloomberg News quoted current and former SBA workers and outside fraud investigators describing widespread fraud that the computers had failed to catch.

About 300 companies that received as much as half a billion dollars in pandemic-related government loans have filed for bankruptcy, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of government data and court filings. Many of the companies, which employ a total of about 23,400 workers, say that the funds from the Paycheck Protection Program weren’t enough to keep them going as the coronavirus and lack of additional stimulus payments weighed on their businesses. The total number of companies that failed despite getting PPP loans is likely far higher. The Journal only analyzed the big borrowers from the program, which accounted for about half of the overall loans though only about 13.5 percent of the total participants. And many small businesses simply liquidate when they run out of cash rather than file for bankruptcy. The government awarded a total $525 billion in PPP loans to 5.2 million companies since April, according to the Small Business Administration. The SBA has only released data on the largest borrowers, which the Journal linked to bankruptcy filings. The total amount lent to companies that went bankrupt is between $228 million and $509 million—the government publishes a range for the loan amounts. Half of the 285 firms identified by the Journal have filed for bankruptcy since August. Dozens of recipients, which come from nearly every state, cited the pandemic as a primary reason for entering bankruptcy.

In just a matter of days, America’s long effort to revive its virus-battered economy has been put on pause across much of the country as new infections soar at the fastest pace since the pandemic’s earliest days, Bloomberg News reported. California yesterday reinstituted bans on many indoor businesses across the state, and its governor warned he may impose a curfew. Michigan has ordered a three-week partial shutdown, while states including Oregon, Washington and New Jersey tightened curbs. Even the governor of Iowa, long resistant to virus rules, issued a limited mask mandate yesterday. The new restrictions follow a rapid surge in cases -- with the country adding a million infections in the first 10 days of November alone -- that has led health officials to issue dire warnings about the prospect of uncontrollable outbreaks as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches. In a call with governors yesterday, Deborah Birx, a key member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, said the increase is showing no signs of a plateau and that nursing homes, in particular, are being hard-hit.

The Small Business Administration won a temporary stay of a federal judge’s ruling that required the agency to release detailed information on Paycheck Protection Program borrowers, including names and specific loan amounts, the Wall Street Journal reported. The temporary stay means the agency won’t have to release the information on PPP borrowers by Nov. 19, as originally ordered by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. The initial ruling applied both to PPP loans and coronavirus-related loans under the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. The SBA, through its attorneys at the Justice Department, requested a full stay of the judge’s order, saying that it was considering an appeal. Judge Boasberg, in granting the temporary stay, said the SBA won’t have to release detailed information on borrowers until the agency’s request for a full stay is resolved. The judge gave plaintiffs in the case until Nov. 27 to respond to the merits of the SBA’s request.

The federal government is swamped with reports of potential fraud in the Paycheck Protection Program, according to government officials and public data, casting a shadow on one of the federal government’s signature responses to the coronavirus pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported. Congress and the Trump administration designed the PPP to give small businesses fast and easy access to taxpayer funds, and it worked: About $525 billion in loans were distributed to 5.2 million companies between April 3 and Aug. 8. Many business owners say it was a lifeline in turbulent times. But evidence is growing that many others took advantage of the program’s open-door design. Banks and the government allowed companies to self-certify that they needed the funds, with little vetting. The Small Business Administration’s inspector general, an arm of the agency that administers the PPP, said last month there were “strong indicators of widespread potential abuse and fraud in the PPP.” The watchdog counted tens of thousands of companies that received PPP loans for which they appear to have been ineligible, such as corporations created after the pandemic began, businesses that exceeded workforce size limits (generally 500 employees or fewer) or those listed in a federal “Do Not Pay” database because they already owe money to taxpayers. Tens of thousands of organizations also appear to have received more money than they should have based on their headcounts and compensation rates, it said.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Friday that economic statistics, including a 1 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate, showed that Congress should enact a smaller coronavirus stimulus package that is highly targeted at the pandemic’s effects, Reuters reported. McConnell told a news conference in Kentucky that the fall to a 6.9 percent jobless rate, combined with recent evidence of overall economic growth, showed the U.S. economy is experiencing a dramatic recovery. “I think it reinforces the argument that I’ve been making for the last few months, that something smaller — rather than throwing another $3 trillion at this issue — is more appropriate,” McConnell told reporters. But his call for a narrow package was quickly rejected by House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, who has been working to broker a COVID-19 stimulus deal near the $2 trillion mark with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Senate Republicans, who oppose a larger package, have twice failed to move forward with smaller legislation worth $500 billion due to Democratic opposition. Pelosi insisted that any agreement must include effective support for testing, tracing and vaccine development, as well as aid to state and local governments. Trump and his Republican allies have balked at Democratic demands for state and local aid, calling it a bailout for Democratic-run states and cities.