Paycheck Guarantee Act — One-Pager

Record facts

Full text

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) 
Paycheck Guarantee Act 
 
Congress should act now to pass the Paycheck Guarantee Act to end mass layoffs, keep 
workers paid and connected to their healthcare and other benefits, prevent employers of all 
sizes from being forced to close permanently, and ensure that the economy is ready to restart 
when the pandemic ends.  
 
Governments across the globe have shut down non-essential businesses and imposed social 
distancing protocols to “flatten the curve” and stop the spread of COVID-19. While many countries 
are experiencing precipitous drops in consumer demand as a result of these protocols, not all 
countries are experiencing the level of mass unemployment seen in the United States. In the last three 
weeks alone, 16.8 million Americans filed jobless claims. Without immediate, direct cash support for 
paychecks, there is a significant risk of Great Depression-era levels of unemployment and 
permanently shuttered business. Economic forecasters are predicting nearly 20 million jobs lost or 
furloughed by July, sending the unemployment above 15 percent. Mass unemployment is the result 
of policy choices, not pandemics. We can and should choose differently.  
 
The Paycheck Guarantee Act would provide grants to employers of all sizes to quickly deliver 
paychecks to workers and provide additional support to businesses for maintenance costs. It would 
also ensure that employers have time to regain their footing once social distancing protocols are 
lifted. The Paycheck Guarantee Act includes strong protections from fraud and abuse, and converts 
any overpayments into low or no-interest loans, repayable by the employer. The Paycheck Guarantee 
Act would put the brakes on economic decline, enabling a speedier recovery and reducing the 
ultimate costs of the crisis to taxpayers. The scale of this crisis far exceeds anything we have seen in 
our lifetimes, and our response must be commensurate. 
 
The Paycheck Guarantee Act would: 
 
1. Cover 100% of wages for workers earning salaries up to $100,000 to ensure that employers 
keep workers paid and out of the unemployment line 
2. Keep workers enrolled in employer-sponsored benefits, including health care 
3. Encourage employers to rehire recently-laid off or furloughed workers by covering payroll 
retroactively to the start of the crisis  
4. Cover essential business expenses like rent, to ensure that businesses don't shutter 
completely and can re-open when the pandemic ends 
5. Get support to workers and employers as quickly as possible, using existing payroll tax 
infrastructure to facilitate delivery of payments 
6. Keep workers attached to the labor market and businesses ready to reopen, speeding up the 
economic recovery.

File and source

File

CONGRESS_HOUSE_JAYAPAL_PAYCHECK-GUARANTEE-ONEPAGER_2020-04-09.pdf

Size

90,594 bytes

SHA-256

0e91f0efb9794ce2b1320d86f44c837d06cdc55cf11e7463730e8a48b54b9689

Our copy

CONGRESS_HOUSE_JAYAPAL_PAYCHECK-GUARANTEE-ONEPAGER_2020-04-09.pdf

Original

jayapal.house.gov