Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a statement on Tuesday saying that the Senate's "first order of business" when it returns on Oct. 19 will be to vote on "targeted relief for American workers," including new funding for the small business Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

Why it matters: House Democrats, Senate Republicans and the Trump administration are still very far apart on key elements of a relief deal, and any push for smaller, more targeted legislation is more of a political maneuver than any thing else.

The Justice Department's Criminal Division says it has charged 57 people to date over allegedly defrauding a federal program meant to provide relief to small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Criminal Division's acting assistant attorney general, Brian Rabbitt, told reporters that those charged attempted to steal more than $175 million. They actually obtained more than $70 million, he said, and the Justice Department has been to recover or freeze over $30 million.

Filings for jobless benefits fell last week to their lowest level since March, a sign layoffs eased somewhat as the labor market tries to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Initial unemployment claims fell by a seasonally adjusted 249,000 to 1.2 million for the week ended Aug. 1, the Labor Department said Thursday. The decline came as an extra $600 a week in pandemic-related unemployment benefits ended.

Nearly 1.2 million laid-off Americans applied for state unemployment benefits last week, evidence that the coronavirus keeps forcing companies to slash jobs just as a critical $600 weekly federal jobless payment has expired.

The Labor Department’s report Thursday marked the 20th straight week that at least 1 million people have sought jobless aid. Before the pandemic hit hard in March, the number of Americans seeking unemployment checks had never surpassed 700,000 in a week, not even during the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

The number of newly filed unemployed insurance claims dropped last week after two straight weeks of rising, but it remains well above historic pre-pandemic levels, according to Labor Department data.

It marked the 20th straight week that more than 1 million Americans filed jobless claims.

A total of 1.19 million people filed new claims last week, down from 1.43 million the week previously. The numbers of new claimants have come down from their peak in March of more than 6 million, but they are still well above the pre-pandemic record of 695,000 from 1982.

Months after Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in an attempt to support small businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic, people are still confused, and even angry, over the ambitious, unprecedented experiment.

At least four members of Congress have reaped benefits in some way from the half-trillion-dollar small-business loan program they helped create.

And no one knows how many more there could be.

It’s a bipartisan group of lawmakers who have acknowledged close ties to companies that have received loans from the program — businesses that are either run by their families or employ their spouse as a senior executive.

At least four members of Congress benefited from loans under the $670 billion Paycheck Protection Program — and there are no rules requiring them to reveal that they did so.

Politico first reported that a small group of Republicans and Democrats have close connections to businesses known to have taken loans under PPP, the small business aid program. Companies that benefited from the loans are either managed by the lawmakers' families or employ spouses in senior and sometimes executive roles.