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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. economic officials on Tuesday urged Congress to provide more help for small businesses amid a surging coronavirus pandemic and concern that relief from a vaccine may not arrive in time to keep them from failing.
"These businesses cannot wait two or three months," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said during a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, urging lawmakers to put as much as $300 billion into grants for struggling businesses.
His comments came amid some renewed momentum for a pandemic aid package, with Republicans and Democrats acknowledging the next few weeks will be critical in determining whether the country's better-than-expected recovery can be coaxed along until the impact of the pending vaccine is felt -- or will weaken as benefits to families expire and the coronavirus continues spreading.
At its peak over the summer, expanded federal unemployment benefits funneled some $12 billion weekly into individual bank accounts, money that propped up spending, padded savings accounts, and fueled rehiring as some parts of the economy bounced back faster than expected.
The expiration of those benefits by the end of this year has prompted calls for a more extended safety net while the vaccine is rolled out.
"We can see the end, we just need to get there," Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said of the pandemic and associated recession that decimated the U.S. economy in the spring and has still left it about 10 million jobs shy of where it was in February.
"People that are in public-facing jobs, in public-facing industries - they may see the light at the end of the tunnel the middle of next year ... They may need more help to get there," Powell said, referring to restaurants, hotels, and entertainment venues that have been the hardest hit by the pandemic.
Job losses in those industries have fallen most heavily on women and minorities.
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