The Paycheck Protection Program was supposed to help small businesses that were negatively impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, many of them received a mere pittance while Donald Trump and his wealthy friends and family members got millions.
The first round of PPP loans were devoured by major corporations and wealthy individuals who could already afford to keep paying their employees during the pandemic.
Even Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow, a millionaire, bragged about how his “artist” wife easily applied for money from the program.
It has since been revealed that Jared Kushner and his family ended up getting PPP money as well, as did Senator Mitch McConnell’s wife and the law firm that represented Trump during the Russia investigation.
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Only small businesses should have been able to receive this money, but it turns out that some received as little as a single one-dollar bill and there is some inconsistency concerning how the money was distributed to businesses owned by people of color.
“As the largest stimulus program in our nation’s history, PPP must receive proper oversight and transparency,” Small Business Majority Founder and CEO John Arensmeyer said in a statement. “While we are pleased the SBA has finally released borrower information, the data set unveiled today is a far cry from an accurate picture of the program. Across the board, there are gaping holes and inconsistencies in the information. Serious questions remain about whether PPP funds were equitably distributed to minority-owned businesses, and there is an alarming rate of small-dollar loans.”
This as black unemployment still stands at over 15 percent and the overall unemployment rate stands at 11 percent. Had PPP loans actually made it into the pockets of small business owners instead of the Kushners and other wealthy people and corporations, the unemployment rate may have been lower.
But the Small Business Administration under Trump’s lackey Linda MacMahon only added insult to injury by providing pennies to many small businesses instead of giving them the amounts they needed.
“Nationally, a total of more than 21,800 small businesses, many with multiple employees, received a loan for under $1,000,” Arensmeyer said. “To raise eyebrows even more, more than 1,200 of those businesses received less than $100–with some receiving loans as low as $1.00!”
Americans should definitely be outraged about this injustice.
“Underfunding has been a pervasive problem for borrowers since PPP launched,” Arensmeyer continued. “About one in every four small businesses in our network have reported receiving a lower loan than what they requested. While many business owners received no explanation for why they did not receive the full loan amount, a number of other businesses have reported that lenders and the SBA either failed to catch and rectify errors on applications, or businesses were told to accept less than what they would qualify for to move things through the process quickly.”
Again, this is not how the PPP was supposed to work. There’s no way the Kushner family business qualifies as a “small” business. That family is wealthy enough to cover their own expenses, but they stole taxpayer dollars anyway. This is why our economy is not going to recover even remotely as quickly as Trump claims. Many of these businesses may not recover because they did not get the money they applied for while those who should not have even been allowed to apply did. It’s absolutely disgusting. And the effects of these losses are going to impact communities for years to come.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
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