S. 4008, “A bill to provide COVID relief for restaurants, gyms, minor league sports teams, border businesses, live venue service providers, exclave businesses, and providers of transportation services,” would provide $48 billion for Small Business Administration grants to help small businesses that were harmed by the Covid pandemic.
The Senate did not vote directly on S. 4008, but on a motion to invoke cloture (and thus limit debate) so the bill could be voted on. The motion to invoke cloture was rejected on May 19, 2022 by a vote of 52 to 43 (Roll Call 192; a three-fifths majority of the entire Senate is required to invoke cloture). We have assigned pluses to the nays because not only is such spending not authorized anywhere in the Constitution, but this additional deficit spending would contribute to the ruinous inflation that is currently plaguing Americans. The economic harms to restaurants and other small businesses that S. 4008 is supposed to remedy were due to the unconstitutional federal and state Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates in the first place.
