MIAMI (CBSMiami) – All is quiet inside popular Gym Bar on Wilton Drive. It’s been like this for a month now.
“Our last day of business was on March 17th,” said owner Rick Schmutzler.
“We’ve been closed since that day. All of our employees have been off work since then,” he said.
Now that the bar is shuttered, employees like Aubrey Collier have been wondering how to pay the bills at home.
“All of us, especially those of us who are single, this was our only source of income,” Collier said. “When you have rent, utilities, groceries, just basic living expenses that you don’t know how you’re going to pay them.”
He tells me everyone’s applied for unemployment but no one’s gotten money yet.
Schmutzler applied for the Paycheck Protection Program, hoping to keep employees paid.
“We’ve applied for all the different SBA loans, including the payroll protection. Which we were very hopeful for and unfortunately found out that it was already out of money,” he said.
He also applied for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan, known as E-I-D-L. No luck there either.
The website says they have a lapse in appropriations. On top of that, he tells us system glitches forced him to file then refile — just to get turned down.
“I can not remember the last time I’ve been that angry,” he said, “With all the hoops I jumped through, we’ve done everything we can, we’ve tried to follow the letter of the law. Ya, frustrated it an understatement?”
He called his Congressman Ted Deutch.
Deutch says the plan is to fund those programs again.
To get it done. The House, Senate, and White House have to reach an agreement.
“I think we’re just about there and my hope is, as I said, that these negotiations will be able to wrap up and we’ll be able to get this critical lifeline out to these businesses who need it so, so desperately,” Rep. Deutch said.
Congressman Deutch is hoping for an agreement at any time now. If that happens, he said we could see more funding rolled out next week.
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