Sen. Moran Speaks with RFD-TV About Protecting Rural America During COVID-19

US Senator Jerry Moran joins us now with further perspective. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. It just goes to show how much you care about rural America. Now many rural hospitals were already facing a cash crunch before the pandemic you're well aware of this bring us up to speed Senator Moran on the increased efforts for funding in some of these hospitals. Well, Christina you're you're right and I the point I would make a hospital's businesses and almost everything else our our farmers farmers in in Kansas Kansas Kansas if if if if they they they they are. are are. are if if they're they're if if we we go go. out of business. US now the ability to get them back into business later is significantly reduced our many of our businesses. our farmers, our hospitals are hanging on by the smallest of margins now even before Cove in 19 and so we need to do everything we can now to keep them in business caring for people providing the services and meeting our countries food supply needs. So there is a real timing this to this and if we lose our hospitals in a community community across across Kansas Kansas and and Nebraska Nebraska across across the the country. country, we be. To lose the community, senior citizens who often make up a significant portion of our population, can't live in a community without access to health care and young families can't take the risk of raising their children in the absence of that local hospital. so the this cares act, the of what we have been calling phase three has significant opportunities for our community health care providers to access dollars from significant amount of money, money, a hundred a hundred billion billion dollars dollars dollars in in in grants grants grants across across across the the the country. country. country in in the. the meantime, there's a. Ability to get an advance on Medicare payments, but we've done a significant number of things trying to make sure we give the tools to our local hospitals to be there to care for us at this time of crisis, but also into the future. Absolutely you know it's so important right now and and it has to be hard to be in your position because we're all walking this fine line of public health and the economy how our eggs and small businesses being impacted by Covid- 19 right now, talk about that if you will well significantly, they are impacted and small business that I would give to demonstrate how the demand for help is there is that we set aside in the last piece of legislation significant amounts of dollars 340 -, nine billion dollars for loan guarantees by the small business administration. It's been a topic of conversation across Kansas and around the country, and in fact, 220000 loans have already been made guaranteed by the SBA for a total of 60 - six billion dollars. The idea of increasing the amount that is in that account for this purpose by another 250 billion dollars. so the demand is there are small businesses are in significant challenging times and this is a program that that if you'll keep your employees employed and you're a business less than 500 you can get most of that loan forgiven and it's guaranteed by the SBA. so your banks are are interested interested in in making making the the loans loans there's there's a a lot lot of of demand demand. for. Help today our farmers I had a conversation with Secretary Purdue just a couple of days ago. we're trying to make certain that livestock producers in significant part aren't forgotten but all of our grain production ethanol is a significant component of how we consume corn and grain sorghum and those ethanol plants are pretty important to the economy, Agriculture and business wise. so just all across across the country, but certainly rural America. it is a. Challenging time and we're all trying to do our part to get this behind us so that we can get back to something called normal. That's right and God bless you going into Easter Sunday for really looking out for rural America. the way that you are US. Senator Jerry Moran. Thank you so much for joining us.