Tuesday’s negotiations between the House and White House offered some hope but the midnight deadline was canceled, then Senate Democrats blocked a scaled-down measure to replenish the Paycheck Protection Program.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will meet again today to try and hammer out their differences in a broader bill.
The White House has increased its offer of how much money it will allow to be in the bill, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that the dollar figure is a sticking point and it is likely no deal will come before the election.
Payments from the second round of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program are rolling out.
Nearly 350,000 applications have been approved, so far. More than $6 billion dollars has gone out to the various sectors:
- Acreage-based crops have been awarded $3 billion dollars
- Nearly $2 billion dollars has gone to livestock
- More than $625 million dollars for dairy
- $600 million for sales commodities
At this point, the program is only one month in and has already distributed more than half the amount during the entire time of CFAP 1.