A Republican senator, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, had been accurately criticized for similar reasons two days earlier. But Salazar’s criticism is inaccurate.
Here are the facts.
On Friday, the day after President Joe Biden signed the $ 1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in law, Salazar tweeted the word “#BREAKING” with siren images around it, then wrote: “So proud to announce that the Biden administration has just implemented my bipartisan relief bill COVID as part of the @SBAgov policy!”
Salazar, a freshman member of the House, included a hyperlink and an image that explained that she was talking about the Biden government’s recently announced decision to give small businesses more time to pay for Economic Injury Disaster Loans.
Many commentators assumed that Salazar was applauding a part of the American Rescue Plan. But she was not.
Facts first: Salazar did not receive credit for any part of the American Rescue Plan. Instead, the loan policy she applauded was adopted by the Small Business Administration separately from the American rescue plan. Salazar and a Democratic colleague, Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas, proposed a very similar loan policy in one demand they proposed in early March. This Salazar-Davids bill is what Salazar was referring to when he tweeted that the Biden government implemented “my COVID bipartisan relief bill”.
A White House official, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, Bharat Ramamurti, tweeted on Sunday to try to correct Salazar’s inaccurate criticism.
“I saw some confusion about this. On Friday – separate from the American bailout project – the SBA announced that it was allowing 3M + companies to postpone EIDL loan payments for another year. We are happy to see bipartisan support for this and other changes we’ve made to help small businesses, “said Ramamurti.
The Small Business Administration acted “under its own authority”, in consultation with the Biden-Harris team, to make the policy change – not under the American Rescue Plan, a Small Business Administration spokesman said on Monday. condition of anonymity.
Salazar could be accurately criticized for commemorating this element of Covid’s relief, after having rejected a wide range of other American Rescue Plan relief policies. And critics have been able to accurately observe that the American Rescue Plan she opposed includes billions in additional financing for loans and grants to small businesses.
But many of the criticisms of Salazar’s tweet were totally inaccurate. Critics with six- or seven-digit Twitter followers – including the California Democrat Rep. Ted Lieu; Fred Wellman, executive director of Lincoln Project, the conservative group that campaigned against President Donald Trump; composer and activist Holly Figueroa O’Reilly; Markos Moulitsas, founder of the progressive political website Daily Kos; and journalist Soledad O’Brien – wrongly claimed that Salazar was praising a bill she voted against.
Moulitsas, O’Brien and Wellman immediately posted corrections after CNN contacted them to explain that they had been inaccurate. Lieu kept his tweet, saying in a message to CNN that he thinks the American Rescue Plan, and the provisions it contains to reinforce the emergency loan program, “gave SBA confidence to extend the repayment period” .
(CNN anchor Chris Cuomo tweeted a question on Sunday in response to Salazar’s tweet praising the loan policy, Asking on Twitter because she voted against the relief bill. On Monday, he tweeted that Salazar was correct in saying that the loan policy is separate from the relief account.)
It is unclear the role that Salazar, Davids or the additional co-sponsors of their project played in the Biden government’s decision. But their project preceded the government’s announcement.
On March 3, Salazar and Davids submitted a proposal to the House to extend the interest and principal payment period on Economic Injury Disaster Loans – to two years from the previous year. The loans, totaling more than $ 200 billion, went to small businesses and non-profit organizations that suffered a temporary loss of revenue due to the pandemic.
On Friday, just over an hour before Salazar’s commemorative tweet, the Small Business Administration sent out a press release saying it would extend the first payment due date – to two years for all Small Business disaster loans Administration made in 2020 and 18 months for all loans made in 2021.