“Rep. Gerry Connolly criticized the Senate’s ‘short-sighted’ decision to kill $9 billion for IT modernization in the latest COVID-19 relief package as ‘dereliction’ on Tuesday.
Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, thought the House and Senate had reached a consensus agreement to fund the Technology Modernization Fund at around $5 billion or $6 billion.
Prior to taking power, the Biden administration chose TMF as its mechanism for pumping money into ancient IT systems that have struggled to provide people and small businesses with pandemic relief funds, proposing to put $9 billion into the fund.
‘But the Senate, in its great wisdom, started arguing: “What is that for? That seems like a slush fund. How is that related to COVID?”’ Connolly said at an ACT-IAC event. ‘And you would think that they were living on a different planet.’
Many lawmakers operate on the ‘false assumption’ the government transitioned to remote work and began making direct payments to people and loans to small businesses on functional IT systems during the pandemic, he said. Rather, the reality is the Small Business Administration‘s E-Tran system went from processing a loan portfolio of $20 billion to handling $400 in relief funds overnight. And the system’s rules for eligibility, financial institutions, terms and conditions, and transferring loans into grants all had to change to save more small businesses…” Read the full article here.
Source: Connolly bashes Senate’s ‘short-sighted’ decision to kill TMF funding mid-pandemic – By Dave Nyczepir, February 9, 2021. FedScoop.
