President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will make minority- and women-owned small businesses its “priority,” his transition team tweeted Sunday.
“Our focus will be on small businesses on Main Street that aren’t wealthy and well connected, that are facing real economic hardships through no fault of their own,” Biden said during the video.
“Our priority will be black, Latino, Asian, and Native American-owned small businesses, women-owned businesses, and finally having equal access to resources needed to reopen and rebuild. But we’re going to make a concerted effort to help small businesses in low-income communities, in big cities, small towns, rural communities that have faced systemic barriers to relief,” Biden said during the video.
Congress passed a $900 billion coronavirus stimulus package and a $1.4 trillion government funding bill in December by an overwhelming majority. President Donald Trump signed the bill after previously saying he wouldn’t accept it as it was written and had called for modifications to the bill.
Trump had called for the $600 stimulus checks to be raised to $2,000 and urged for more aid to small businesses, “in particular, restaurants.” The president additionally said there were multiple “wasteful items,” including foreign aid and environmental projects funding.
Biden emphasized the importance of the bill and demanded Trump sign the legislation in a statement from December. Biden described the bill as “a first step and down payment” for additional action necessary in the beginning of 2021 to contain the pandemic and bring back the economy.
The president-elect also said this action takes “meeting the dire need for funding to distribute and administer the vaccine and to increase our testing capacity” into account, the statement said.
“Think of the mom and pop owner with a couple of employees who can’t pick up the phone and call the banker, who doesn’t have a lawyer, an accountant to help them through this complicated process, to know if they’re even qualified, or who simply didn’t know where, where this relief was available in the first place. We went through this, Don, when we were trying to bring—when we brought Detroit back off its knees,” Biden said during the video.
“We owe them that support. To help them get through the other side of this crisis,” Biden said during the video.
The Biden transition team didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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