VALDOSTA – A trillion possesses 12 zeroes. 

Double that amount and you have the CARES Act that passed last week by Congress.

Local business leaders had a chance to hear from someone who helped pass the bill Thursday afternoon.

On a 30-minute conference call with the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) reviewed the $2.2 trillion emergency relief bill passed by the Senate and took a few questions. 

“To put that in perspective, our economy – the GDP of the United States last year – was about $21 trillion,” she said. “So on a numbers basis, it’s about 10% of the economy. But when you add the leverage from the banking system into that, we’re really looking at a $7-8 trillion package, and that’s about a third of the economy.”

Loeffler has remained a prominent figure in the news during the past few weeks after The Daily Beast reported that accounts owned by Loeffler and her husband began selling shares of stock totaling millions of dollars following a Jan 24 meeting with the Senate Health Committee. 

The private committee meeting briefed senators about COVID-19, and the couple’s shares of stock were sold starting that day through mid-February, before markets took massive hits, per the report.

The senator has denied any wrongdoing saying investment decisions were made by third-parties and announced Wednesday that both Loeffler and her husband would divest from all individual stocks and transfer their money into mutual and exchange-traded funds.

The senator bifurcated the historic aid package into two components for the audience: health care and the economy.

When discussing the finer points of the health care portion, Loeffler spoke about the vital role of hospitals such as South Georgia Medical Center in communities. Of the $100 billion in grants designated for hospitals, she mentioned that the first $30 million would be dispersed starting Friday based on hospital Medicare data. 

She cited three items she pushed for in the health care section of the bill: a grant for local hospitals, an emphasis on telehealth services and “essential medical device supply chain tracking.”

“Making sure we don’t run out of things like swabs, face masks, gloves,” she explained.

When tracking the chain of these supplies, she said knowing stockpile amounts and stockpile locations are vital when combatting a pandemic.

The package also included support for veteran’s health care. Loeffler said she was pleased to see $14 billion allocated to support VA hospitals.

Additionally, COVID-19 anti-body testing could be on the horizon.

After a Thursday call with Vice President Mike Pence and the COVID-19 task force, she reported positive developments for coronavirus testing and for COVID-19 anti-body testing, but a timeline was not mentioned.

“That will allow you to see if you or your family or your coworkers have already had COVID-19,” Loeffler said.

As of 7 p.m. Thursday, Georgia had tested more than 41,000 people for the coronavirus, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health.

Referring to the second half of the aid package as the “economic health” portion, Loeffler said small businesses would receive $350 billion in relief through the Paycheck Protection Program and more money could be on the way.

As early as Friday, she said an expanded relief package for small businesses was coming which would provide an additional influx of possibly $250 billion in aid.

The PPP program has been so popular that $3.5 billion worth of loans were doled out hourly, Loeffler said. That rapid rate made the senator anxious to get additional money out to small businesses, she said.

She added she is working to clarify the qualifying and eligibility components for small businesses applying for relief loans.  

Addressing the economic impact checks headed to all Americans, Loeffler said people who filed taxes electronically should see a check before May.

“Probably would be realistic to set your expectations for the end of the month and then be pleasantly surprised if it comes earlier,” she said.

Touching on unemployment insurance benefits, the senator said the state unemployment office is overrun handling applications and requests and that about 17 million Americans had filed unemployment claims since the start of the outbreak.

Growing up on an Illinois farm, Loeffler noted the package included a $9.5 billion grant for agricultural producers and she is looking into other avenues for relief to Georgia farmers.

Toward the end of the call, Valdosta State University President Richard Carvajal asked Loeffler about a potential fourth stimulus bill to help fill holes in state budgets from the economic downturn as universities such as VSU expect less money from the state to operate. 

Loeffler said she spoke with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin almost a week ago about revenue shortfall in states, and the inspector general overseeing the aid given to states for “COVID response expenses” has interpreted the money will not go to any revenue shortfall. She did mention a new program declared by the Federal Reserve to provide low-cost lending to local entities as an option but details were still sparse at the time.