The Paycheck Protection Program: who wrote it
What they say
Her campaign says she was the author of the Paycheck Protection Program, and that the program saved and protected more than 250,000 jobs in Maine.
“She was the author of the bipartisan Paycheck Protection Program that provided forgivable loans to small businesses during the pandemic, saving and protecting more than 250,000 jobs in Maine.”
What the record shows ·
The program was created by section 1102 of the CARES Act, Public Law 116-136, which the Senate passed 96 to 0 on March 25, 2020 and which was signed on March 27. Its forerunner, small business loans that could be forgiven, was in S. 3548, the Senate Republican bill Mitch McConnell introduced for himself and six committee chairmen; Collins is not among them. The Congressional Record names her as one of its authors. In June 2020 the majority leader called Marco Rubio and Collins the program's chief architects and thanked them for authoring it, and in April Ben Cardin said it was negotiated by Rubio, Collins, Jeanne Shaheen and himself. In September 2020 she sponsored S. 4773, the Continuing the Paycheck Protection Program Act.
Limit: The Record makes her one of the program's authors, not its only one: the majority leader names Rubio beside her, and Cardin names four senators who negotiated it. Those are colleagues' statements on the floor, not a drafting record; no committee document assigning the drafting was found. The jobs figure rests on Small Business Administration loan data this desk did not read.