That "Paycheck Protection Program" small business loan money that Sen. Mitch McConnell has been so adamant about? The one that some very big businesses have been exploiting to the tune of tens of millions of dollars? Turns out that for a lot of businesses, it's not going to (checks notes) paycheck protection.
The program is supposed to provide an incentive for businesses to keep their employees on the payroll. If they retain or rehire them for eight weeks, the loan is forgivable. But lots of businesses are taking the money and not rehiring their workers. "Many of the small companies that were able to obtain a loan are having second thoughts about rehiring all their workers and a few plan to return the money," the AP reports, while some say they'll use the portion that's allowed to go to rent and utilities and bring back some of their staff. They don't see the point in keeping these people on payroll when their business are shut down and the staff isn't doing anything. "You're turning the business into a pass through for the federal government," Joe Walsh, who owns Clean Green Maine, a cleaning service in Portland, Maine with 35 employees, told AP. "You're doing very little to actually help the business." Except, of course, saving those 35 employees' jobs for when the business starts up again. And given them the security of a paycheck.
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So of course the National Federation for Independent Business, a small business advocacy group—the same group that took outlawing the Affordable Care Act to the Supreme Court the first time around—wants to make it so the loans are even more easily forgiven without the whole "keep people employed" part. They are trying to get the Small Business Administration to eliminate the requirement that businesses spend 75% of their loans on payroll. If they can't get it eliminated entirely, they want to have it reduced to 50%.
Let's go back to the beginning. When Sen. Marco Rubio created this provision for the CARES Act, he said: "As we fight this public health crisis, the most important thing that we can do for our nation’s small businesses and their employees is to provide some certainty—certainty to businesses that they can keep their employees, certainty to employees that they can remain on the payroll and certainty that the connection between employer and employee will remain intact after this crisis passes." That's not what's happening with some of the businesses getting loans through this program.
So, again, why is there a rush for the House to take up this bill on Thursday? We know that it's already been used to reward businesses in red states and some big corporations. If it's not providing "certainty that the connection between employer and employee will remain intact," which was supposed to be the whole damned point of it, then why is it going to be rubber-stamped again? At least demand a hell of a lot more out of the process if you're going to give McConnell this program.