Well, looky here! A new investigation of data from the Paycheck Protection Program finds that, in Trump’s final days, his administration rushed to eliminate oversight for loans which were flagged for potential fraud or further investigation — and wiped flags from nearly every one of the largest PPP loans. Via Truthout:
As the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) revealed in a report published Wednesday, over the course of several weeks before President Joe Biden was inaugurated, the Trump administration went on a spree of eliminating flags on PPP loans, the majority of which went directly to personally enriching the richest Americans. Officials in the Small Business Administration (SBA) eliminated 2.7 million flags between December 2020 and January 2021, as the administration was in its lame duck period.
Special preference was given to the largest loans, which often also went to the largest corporations. On January 16, 2021, four days before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, Trump’s SBA wiped 99 percent of special review flags, which were given out to every loan above $2 million for separate investigatory purposes.
If the Trump administration did, indeed, go on a spree to mass-clear potential fraud flags before Trump left office, it is no surprise that it appeared to have favored the very largest loan recipients. Trump continually gave huge financial favors to large corporations during his time in office — and though most large corporations were exempt from receiving PPP loans, some large corporations managed to skirt the rules and receive loans anyway.
Out of the $800 billion given out in the program, flagged loans accounted for at least $189 billion. Because the vast majority of PPP loans — 95 percent — have been forgiven, it’s likely that many of these loans that had previously been flagged have been forgiven entirely.
Socialism for the rich, bootstrap capitalism for the rest of us!
I want to hear how Republicans who think student debt forgiveness is theft of taxpayer funds feel about this.
Ah, who am I kidding? If it's not on Fox, OAN, or another one of the bastardized media arms of the right wing, most MAGAts will never even hear about this.
