New Bill Passed
This is Kevin Comer at the Report. We've had a lot of action in the past 24 hours. Congress passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act ensuring free testing for Covid 19 and expanding unemployment benefits and sick leave to people affected by the crisis. Here are the provisions as written:
establish a federal emergency paid leave benefits program to provide payments to employees taking unpaid leave due to the coronavirus outbreak
expand unemployment benefits and provide grants to states for processing and paying claims
require employers to provide paid sick leave to employees
establish requirements for providing coronavirus diagnostic testing at no cost to consumers
treat personal respiratory protective devices as covered countermeasures that are eligible for certain liability protections
temporarily increase the Medicaid federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP)
Other measures are being discussed. I believe that a lot of help will soon be available, but it will take a few days to get everything arranged. Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, wants to get checks into the hands of the unemployed within three weeks. If you've lost your job, help should be coming soon. We will keep you updated. Please bookmark this page to check each day or submit your email to get alerts when a new Report goes out.
The US Restaurant Association estimates 7 million lost jobs in the next three months. Go ahead and apply for unemployment in Florida if you've lost your job. Even if you are not eligible right now, you likely will be in a few days. If you are a small business, please look at the links below for disaster support. I'm happy to answer questions about these and will go into more detail in a later post.