Head of Small Business Administration says it has stopped giving loans as shutdown continues

A former Georgia U.S. Senator warns the Small Business Administration may have to stop providing loans as the government shutdown continues.

The shutdown is now more than 13 days old, and there’s no indication either side will budge.

Channel 2’s Richard Elliot talked one-on-one with the Small Business Administration’s Kelly Loeffler on Tuesday.

As a member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, she was in last Thursday’s meeting when Trump talked about the shutdown’s impact on the country and on small businesses.

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“First of all, the president is very troubled by the shutdown,” Loeffler said. “The president understands that small business is big business. He knows that it powers Main Street. Across this country, it’s 99% of all our businesses.”

Loeffler said because of the shutdown, the SBA cannot guarantee bank loans to small businesses, which equates to about $170 million to 300 businesses every day.

She blames Senate Democrats for the shutdown.

Meanwhile, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees like Abby Tighe held a Tuesday news conference to talk about how Trump is making good on his threat to lay off thousands of federal workers because of the shutdown.

“I was fired by the Trump administration,” Tighe said.

The administration fired approximately 1,300 CDC employees on Friday, only to rehire more than half of them back 24 hours later because they were deemed critical to CDC’s core mission.

Tighe said the Trump administration has now terminated a quarter of the CDC’s staff.

“These terminations were not a glitch. It was not an innocent error. This round of firings, as with all the others experienced at CDC in the last 10 months, was an intentional attack on the American people and the public’s health,” Tighe said.