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Susan Collins

Official · Congress

PPP
Type
Person
Role
Official · Congress
Programs
PPP
Updated

The profile

Maine's Republican senator was one of the four senators who drafted the Paycheck Protection Program in March 2020. In July she proposed second-draw loans for businesses that had lost half their revenue; Congress enacted them in December at a 25 percent threshold.

  • Office: U.S. Senator from Maine, Republican, since January 19971
  • Relief-era role: Chairman, Senate Special Committee on Aging (2020); member of the four-senator group that drafted the CARES Act's small-business title
  • Since 2025: Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriations2

Susan Collins did not sit on the Senate Small Business Committee in 2020; the record of its June 2020 hearing lists her as "also present." She helped write its biggest program.3 On March 25, 2020 the committee's chairman, Marco Rubio, its ranking member, Ben Cardin, Collins, then chairman of the Special Committee on Aging, and Jeanne Shaheen released their final bill. The Keeping American Workers Paid and Employed Act provided "more than $377 billion for small businesses" and became Division A of the CARES Act.4 The Senate passed the CARES Act the same day, 96 to 0.5

Drafting the program

A week earlier, on March 18, Rubio and Collins had called a press conference to unveil the RESCUE Businesses Act of 2020. The committee's advisory described it as a "$300 billion emergency relief plan to help small businesses impacted by the coronavirus pandemic make payroll and cover expenses."6 By the committee's June 10, 2020 hearing on implementing the program, PPP had made 4.5 million loans worth more than $510 billion. Cardin described how it was written: "I was proud to be part of a drafting committee consisting of four Senators--Senator Rubio, Senator Collins, who is with us today, Senator Shaheen, and myself." At the same hearing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he had "had people ask us about the form EZ, Senator Collins and others," referring to a simpler forgiveness application.3

The second draw

On July 27, 2020 Rubio and Collins introduced the Continuing Small Business Recovery and Paycheck Protection Program Act. It would have allowed a second PPP loan for employers with 300 or fewer employees whose revenue had fallen by 50 percent or more in the first or second quarter, with $10 billion set aside for community lenders. It also proposed simplified forgiveness for loans under $150,000 and a separate long-term recovery loan program of nearly $60 billion at a fixed 1 percent rate.7

Collins then voted to advance a scaled-back relief package that failed a cloture vote 52 to 47 on September 10, 2020, and for the year-end Consolidated Appropriations Act, which passed the Senate 92 to 6 on December 21.89 The December law created the second draw with the same 300-employee limit but a 25 percent revenue-loss test.10

Extending the deadline

On March 11, 2021 Collins, Cardin, by then committee chair, and Shaheen introduced the PPP Extension Act of 2021, to push the application deadline from March 31 to May 31 and give SBA 30 more days to process pending applications. Their release cited 2.4 million PPP loans, about $165 billion, approved so far in 2021; the House companion was sponsored by Nydia Velázquez and Blaine Luetkemeyer.10 President Biden signed it on March 30, 2021, extending the deadline to May 31 and giving SBA until June 30 to process backlogged applications. By then the committee counted more than 3.5 million PPP loans approved in 2021, totaling nearly $212 billion.11 In April 2021 she joined Cardin and five other senators on a bill to let self-employed farmers and ranchers use gross income, rather than net income, to calculate their PPP loans, retroactively.12

  • Marco Rubio — Small Business Committee chairman in 2020 and her co-author on the RESCUE and second-draw bills.
  • Ben Cardin — Democratic member of the four-senator drafting group.
  • Jeanne Shaheen — Democratic member of the drafting group and co-sponsor of the 2021 extension.

Sources

  1. @unitedstates project, congress-legislators dataset, legislators-current.json (retrieved Sept. 29, 2026). https://unitedstates.github.io/congress-legislators/legislators-current.json (we do not have a copy). ↩
  2. @unitedstates project, congress-legislators dataset, committee-membership-current.json (retrieved Sept. 29, 2026). https://unitedstates.github.io/congress-legislators/committee-membership-current.json (we do not have a copy). ↩
  3. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship hearing, "Implementation of Title I of the CARES Act" (June 10, 2020). ↩
  4. Senate Small Business Committee, "Bipartisan Small Business Task Force Unveils Final $377 Billion Emergency Coronavirus Relief Package" (Mar. 25, 2020). Original: https://www.sbc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=CAB1ADED-C906-421B-AF0D-1BA906475CBC ↩
  5. Congressional Record, Senate, Mar. 25, 2020, p. S2059 (Rollcall Vote No. 80, CARES Act). Original: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2020-03-25/pdf/CREC-2020-03-25-pt1-PgS2059.pdf ↩
  6. Senate Small Business Committee, "Chairman Rubio, Senator Collins Unveil Sweeping Small Business Emergency Economic Relief Plan" (media advisory, Mar. 18, 2020). Original: https://www.sbc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=3AE25453-984D-488B-86B4-25827A1AA0D7 ↩
  7. Senate Small Business Committee, "Rubio, Collins Introduce Phase IV Small Business Relief Package" (July 27, 2020). Original: https://www.sbc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=7FF5436B-04A6-45F5-9EBA-3E7D01ABBDC5 ↩
  8. Senate Roll Call Vote 168, 116th Congress (Sept. 10, 2020): cloture on the motion to concur in the House amendment to S. 178 with Amendment No. 2652, rejected 52–47. ↩
  9. Senate Roll Call Vote 289, 116th Congress (Dec. 21, 2020): motion to concur on H.R. 133, agreed 92–6. Original: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1162/vote_116_2_00289.xml ↩
  10. Senate Small Business Committee, "Cardin, Collins & Shaheen Introduce Bill to Extend PPP" (Mar. 11, 2021). Original: https://www.sbc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=FDC182D8-01EE-4465-AB14-80BDD91887B8 ↩
  11. Senate Small Business Committee, "Biden Signs Legislation to Extend PPP Deadline" (Mar. 30, 2021). Original: https://www.sbc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=87A51219-EEEC-4707-94DD-873FAE4F3B57 ↩
  12. Senate Small Business Committee, "Cardin, Lankford, Collins, King, Baldwin, Portman & Marshall Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Retroactively Extend PPP Benefits to Farmers, Ranchers, and Sole Proprietors" (April 2021). Original: https://www.sbc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=F5DAA558-E848-4D9D-A89E-005608AF609D ↩
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