Fred Keller is currently serving his second term in Congress, after being elected in a special election in 2019 to fill the unexpired term of Congressman Tom Marino. Prior to Congress, Fred served five terms in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he developed a proven record of working hard to grow Pennsylvania's economy and attract jobs, standing up for taxpayers, promoting agriculture, and tirelessly supporting local families and businesses.
During his 25-year career at Conestoga Wood Specialties, Fred rose to serve as Plant Operations Manager at the company’s Beavertown facility, managing over 230 employees and a $50 million-dollar annual budget. While building his career at Conestoga, Fred started his own successful small business managing properties and serving as a general contractor.
The effects of COVID-19 have changed the way every American lives their lives and earns their livelihood. As a result, Congress has taken a number of significant steps to help protect businesses, employees, individuals, and families from economic injury that occurred through no fault of their own and get needed supplies and resources to healthcare providers and frontline fighters of this terrible virus.
That response has thus far come in three phases.
Phase 1 addressed the immediate public health and safety concerns caused by COVID-19. The $8.3 billion legislative package focused on the healthcare aspects of COVID-19 and included money for testing, vaccine development, therapeutics, personal protective equipment, state and local government response efforts, and mitigation of the disease abroad.
Phase 2 is the $2.5 billion stimulus effort that passed Congress in mid-March. The package includes relief for families and individuals who might need to take paid leave from work in order to care for themselves or family members while providing tax credits to small businesses, boosts unemployment compensation funding for those who may be laid off as a result of COVID-19’s economic impacts, increases funding to low-income nutrition assistance programs, and provides flexibility to child nutrition programs.
Phase 3 was the $2.2 trillion relief package that provided direct rebates to Americans, created the Paycheck Protection Program to help keep businesses open, provided needed funding for front-line healthcare providers to acquire needed supplies, and provided significant funding to help with regional response efforts.
While the effects of this legislation are many, I want to make sure you have the state and federal information and resources you need to navigate through these changes and find the help you may need.
Below, find a list of federal and state resources that are important to getting that help at this time, as well as other places you may find additional helpful tools to navigate through this crisis.
Our offices remain open and ready to help you. We ask that you call or email before stopping in the office. The contact information for our offices can be found on this website’s home page.