Rose Said Small Business Bore Brunt Of COVID

The government likely made a mistake with the additional $600 unemployment supplements.

That’s according to Tennessee Representative John Rose, speaking to local small business owners during a Tuesday roundtable discussion.

“Anything that the federal government, state government, local government does to try and ameliorate the impacts of a forced economic shut down are going to be uneven at best,” Rose said.

Many of the business owners present at the meeting are dealing employees begging to be laid off to receive the extra benefits. Rose said he wants to focus additional aid to businesses that experienced downturn in revenues instead of fueling unemployment.

“I think your stories are really emblematic of what we see happening all across the U.S. economy and certainly the economy of the sixth district of Tennessee,” Rose said. “I think it really underscores how important it is for us to get back to work.”

Rose said he understands why people did not want to return to work with the unemployment incentives. Future unemployment supplements should be reconsidered to avoid small business staffing problems.

“I very much favor a very simplified approach to the small PPE loans and suspect small businesses would agree with me on this,” Rose said. “We build that essentially as a loan that would become a grant if you used it appropriately.”

Rose said the criteria to meet for the PPE loans would be very minimal.