Roger Marshall: “I thank the gentleman, my neighbor from Oklahoma, for yielding. And I thank the gentleman from Maryland, our chairman of…”

“I thank the gentleman, my neighbor from Oklahoma, for yielding. And I thank the gentleman from Maryland, our chairman of the Small Business Committee, for his cooperation. Our amendment will allow farmers and ranchers categorized as a partnership, including LLPs, S corps, to utilize gross income when calculating their PPP maximum loan amount. It is no secret that our Nation's farmers and ranchers have faced incredible difficulties through the COVID-19 pandemic when we literally couldn't pay people to come get our cattle and hogs. In December, we made changes to allow farmers to use gross income in calculating their PPP loan. Before it passed, the payments were based on farmers' net income. This net income number is often low or negative because of the amount of depreciation farmers claim on equipment. These changes were helpful and provided assistance for much of the agriculture industry. Unfortunately, certain farm and ranch partnerships, many of which are small family partnerships, were left out of changes made in the program in December. I believe Congress intended to include partnerships; however, the SBA, interpreting the statute we passed, did not. They made it crystal clear, short of legislation, they would not include partnerships under this new interpretation. My amendment, in a nutshell, would let farmers categorized as a partnership use gross income rather than net income for the PPP loan.…”