I have a stupid question. Rather than trying to come up with an amount to throw at this, is it administratively feasible to say something along the lines of: "the federal government will reimburse all qualifying businesses biweekly for 80% of all payroll expenses for employees making less than $100k and 80% of all rent for all qualifying businesses (<500 employees, etc.) until further notice, and promises to provide at least 2 weeks' notice before stopping reimbursements" ?
Then if businesses don't follow what the rules basically are now in terms of retaining employment levels, etc., they get hit with a tax + unique coronavirus program penalties on their 2020 returns for a proportion of what they received from the feds during the crisis.
It just seems we're trying to just funnel as much money as we can into small businesses to keep people on payroll, but (i) trying to lob sidways numbers at it through congress on the front end plus (ii) setting this up as loans at little to no profit through conventional lenders in association with an understaffed SBA, is really mucking this whole thing up.
