Schneider Invites Highland Park Small Business Owner to Testify to Congress on Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program
This week, Congressman Brad Schneider (D-IL) and other members of the House Small Business Committee heard the testimony of Dr. Craig Gerstein, a Highland Park resident and local small business owner. At Schneider's invitation, Dr. Gerstein shared his difficult experience with the Small Business Administration's (SBA's) Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.
The hearing, titled "The Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program: A View from Main Street" was held virtually via Cisco WebEx on Wednesday, June 10. A video recording is available online.
Dr. Gerstein has practiced ophthalmology in Chicago for the past twenty years. He runs the Gerstein Eye Institute jointly with his father, Melvyn, who started the practice more than fifty years ago. He submitted an EIDL application on March 24, and received little to no feedback from the SBA on the status of his application despite multiple calls to the SBA help line, emails to customer service, and engaging the help of Congressman Schneider's casework team. He was required to reapply and ultimately received approval six-weeks after submitting his application (despite a promised three-week turnaround), however the amount for which he has been approved falls far short of his need. He has since submitted a request demonstrating greater need for additional funds, but has not yet received a response.
Sharing his frustrations with the process in his testimony before the Committee, Dr. Gerstein said, "Uncertainty kills small businesses, and these processes built extreme pressure on my practice. We do not have the luxury of time. Invoices, rent, utilities, health and malpractice insurance payments, and the salaries for my staff continued to accumulate with no realization of how I would be able to cover those expenses. I needed the information and loan details that would have allowed me to decide to keep going or to close up shop decisions that need to be made in real time with concrete answers. Unfortunately, hope doesn't pay the bills or put food on the table. I felt as if the institution tasked with helping me through this crisis could offer no help or guidance."
"The Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program was created by Congress to provide a vital lifeline for businesses at moments of crisis, such as the Covid Pandemic. But when the SBA doesn't efficiently get money out the door or effectively communicate its processes, our nation's small businesses are left hanging on by a thread." said Congressman Schneider. "EIDL loans enable businesses to navigate the immediate challenges of the Covid crisis and also plan for their long-term future. Over the past three months, however, business owners have waited far longer than the SBA promised and lacked the necessary information—such as the status of their loan application and expected loan amount—while facing make or break decisions. I greatly appreciate Dr. Gerstein sharing his strong voice as a small business owner from our community in Illinois, and his incredibly frustrating, and all too common, experience with the SBA. The SBA and the Trump Administration as a whole have to do a much better job administering this program and communicating with small business borrowers."
At the hearing, Schneider mentioned the letter he led to SBA with one-hundred Members of Congress pressing them to update EIDL loan applicants on the status of their loan. To date, over a month later, the SBA has not responded. Yesterday, Schneider joined a bipartisan letter from members of the House Small Business Committee calling on the SBA to fix many of the identified problems with the EIDL program.