$755B was forgiven. I know that there are many benefits for this program but I cannot resist comparing this with the NSF budget. This is equal to about 75.5 years of the current NSF budget (assuming constant budget but unlikely as there is planned deep cuts). If we assume that the budget will increase 5% to adjust for inflation (unlikely too) then that would about 32yrs. Not that I'm comparing in absolute usefulness. I just don't understand why this particular item in the budget making all this noise while comparing to the vast majority of programs is peanuts.
It's been discussed before but I'll go ahead and say it again. Any administration that was actually serious about cutting spending to benefit the American people would start with cutting unnecessary defense projects and large scale healthcare reform. Those categories take up the vast, vast majority of the budget. But instead, they cut the programs projecting benevolence to the world and protecting us from tuberculosis outbreaks because they were "full of marxists" and then proceeded to outline a horrifying plan for expansion that would certainly increase defense costs. There isn't actual logic here, it's based on subjective feelings and lies designed to appease voters and enrage them at the other side. God forbid there ever be any deep thought or nuance to anything.
One causes "the base" to dig in even deeper in their support. The other makes people happen under subsequent administrations. Americans' addictions to cheap sugar doesn't end at literal donuts.
I have almost $50k in that number. (1099 income.) It was a waste.
A friend was a senior staffer negotiating that bill. We were together, in 2020, when these bills were drafted and passed. My friend aimed to exempt people like me from forgiveness. I, of course, didn't mind the free money, but know that for my $50k there are the e.g. Ciprianis borrowing millions only to transfer it, immediately, to their personal accounts. Even selfishly, I was a net payer.
They never managed to exempt me. So I applied for the loans, got them, never paid a dime, applied for forgiveness, got it and then walked away. (I didn't fire myself, nor even cut my hours!) Granted, these sums are peanuts compared with the bonanza I'm about to reap with Trump's TCJA mark 2. But at least that's plainly a giveaway to the wealthy.
Don’t know about the OPs case, but forgiveness was based on meeting the requirements of the program: 60% of the loan to employees and 40% to approved employer expenses (business overhead such as rent and electricity).
I assisted with the submission of PPP forgiveness for 4 restaurants.
It’s hard to imagine that people really believe world leadership in science is just a meaningless line item to be culled to make political points, but here we are. It will definitely be worth it to someone in the long run, but undoubtedly not the American people.
Our budget, all of it, needs an audit, the people have complained about government waste and demanded an audit for ages. We are finally getting that long desired audit.
Spread the entire budget out, all expenses line by line for all to see, and may they survive or be culled based solely upon their merits in the eyes of the American people. If the NSF's expenses are justifiable, demonstrate it in witness of the American people like any other line item.
So to use some choice words from our Vice President: "I don't really care." I don't want my taxes wasted on bullshit and I think most Americans agree with me. And if you're against audits, I have to wonder what your motives actually are.
> Spread the entire budget out, all expenses line by line for all to see, and may they survive or be culled based solely upon their merits in the eyes of the American people.
"Contains detailed information on the various appropriations and funds that constitute the budget and is designed primarily for the use of the Appropriations Committees. The Appendix contains more detailed financial information on individual programs and appropriation accounts than any of the other budget documents. It includes for each agency: the proposed text of appropriations language; budget schedules for each account; legislative proposals; explanations of the work to be performed and the funds needed; and proposed general provisions applicable to the appropriations of entire agencies or group of agencies. Information is also provided on certain activities whose transactions are not part of the budget totals."
I feel like a lot of people clamor for this and it's right there for everyone to read. Not that I expect citizens to read >1,000 pages of budget information alone every year: I certainly don't. But let's not pretend the information isn't there for people who want it.
I think that kind of proves my point: These "budgets" are so damn convoluted that nobody actually understands them. Even the House Speaker is surprised at the shit DOGE is digging up, and he's the boss of the people who write and pass the budgets.
And even that aside, anyone who knows how the real world works can understand that what should happen and what does happen are not necessarily the same especially if corruption is involved.
It's not clear to me that administering an entity with as many people and as much land as the United States could be done in a simple enough way that would satisfy these objections (not necessarily yours specifically, but this broad class). Though I certainly don't object to the notion that there's fat to trim and ways to make things less complicated.
I would be interested in an existence proof of this: an entity of similar population and size with a budget that's simple in comparison.
My naive expectations are that more authoritarian countries will hide a lot of budgetary items and countries with coalition-style governments will have even messier budgets than the US. Looking into that would be interesting but it's not going to make it onto my Sunday morning short-list.
My opinion about this remains that if the governed are really interested, they need to put in the ground work to understand the material that's available. Some things just are complicated and require studying to understand.
So how about his tax plan that’ll increase debt by trillions per year over the next decade? Think that’s smart too?
Anyways, this isn’t an audit, and it’s certainly not open. A billionaire and several interns are behind closed doors picking things, NOT the American people. I don’t get why you’re ignoring that, everything Trump is doing points to capturing the government as a techno-oligarchy, not balancing the budget like you claim. I simply don’t understand why you’re ignoring the evidence of your own eyes and ears and actually believing the crap these traitors are saying.
As noted elsewhere here, if you are only "saving money" by cutting programs you don't like then it's not about saving money -- it's about gutting programs you don't like.
There are large chunks of government money that are effectively investments in the future, and it's important to recognize that as each budget is evaluated.
Many sole proprietorships registered and individuals in my area have these loans. I suspect this was a major contributor to inflation.
For example, a neighbor who owns several franchised restaurants received a few million in PPP loans. But during COVID he also bought a Cirrus Vision Jet. Very suspicious.
The PPP loan program is a borrower self-certified program. Meaning the gov't did absolutely nothing to ensure funds actually went to payroll.
In my area, US attorneys recently went after someone for misuse of PPP money and got a judgemental against him. The person who turned him in got a big, fat reward.
Feature Request: I really wish there was a button to use the zip code where I'm looking on the map. I don't have zip codes memorized. So I see a bunch of pins around the zip code of my childhood home and then the rest of the map is blank. My only option is to open google maps in another window and copy paste zip codes back and forth. Cool website though - despite the effort to navigate I'm finding a lot out.
Almost all the loan availability were spoken for within hours. The grifters got there first, and the people who really needed the help often got stiffed. The Catholic Church took PPP loans and used it to pay off all the lawsuits from their priests raping kids.
I’d posit that $3.5m is a drop in the bucket when compared to the $600 _billion_ budget of the program itself. Linking to a law firm blog isn’t doing any favors if you’re trying to present yourself as objective here.
It seems disingenuous and pretty transparently ideologically motivated to try and make a shaky connection to pastor abuse, truthfully I think you can do better.
>and the people who really needed the help often got stiffed.
Just one anecdata, but we (family business) were "people who really needed the help" and got approved for PPP, both times. You needed to be fairly timely on applying because of the absurd demand, though.
We had to file paperwork including our payroll, income/loss sheets and more with our bank (not SBA) who actually did most of the groundwork because any PPP loan not forgiven is on the bank's dime.
I thought the free market was important, but you seem to just want handouts. Shouldn’t your business have failed if it wasn’t resilient? Why was your family business more important than any of the families who lost everything during covid? What hypocrites you MAGA folks are!
In my experience the louder someone claims to be for the "free market" the more they are actually aligned with the "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" mindset when you observe what they do rather than what they say.
Your premise is flawed because the free market was corrupted by government-ordered shutdowns. PPP is compensation for that. You can't maintain entire payrolls with quite literally next to no revenue without external cash infusions.
In case you weren't aware, PPP stands for Paycheck Protection Program and the monies disbursed by it are only to compensate for payroll expenses during the specified timeframe. Forgiveness also requires resubmission of payroll and other financial documents at time of forgiveness application to prove the PPP money was used for payroll and noone was fired without cause.
PPP does not and could not make up for a fundamentally flawed business model, all it did was compensate for paycheck expenses that could have been impacted by top-down forced shutdowns, particularly since small businesses by their nature usually can't handle wholly unexpected adversities well.
Your overt mischaracterization of PPP is one of many things that made me vote for Trump, by the way. Fake news sensationalism can die in a fire.
You people always have an excuse for why your handouts are valid but everyone else is a lazy pile of shit. Literally, every time you guys talk it’s, “laws for thee, but not for me!”
The purpose of running the money through employers via PPP was to ensure the socioeconomic rankings didn’t change, so that employees still needed their employers.
Giving everyone more cash with no strings attached would have given them more negotiating power against employers.
Or it was because employees need jobs a lot more than they need $2,500, so if everyone got $2,500 and lost their job, employees would be screwed in like 3 months.
Profit may not trickle down like you hope but pain sure does.
More accurately, it was to preserve employment relationships.
Historically, once mass layoffs happen, they are contagious. Once unemployment rates rise, companies plan to cut costs to ride out a recession.
Also, once employees are unemployed for an extended period of time (something like 9+ months), their odds of finding similarly paying work drop permanently.
It was in everybody’s best interest to reduce the employer-employee churn.
Absolutely. The weird strain of Marxism running through our country these days sort of imagines a bunch of politicians sitting around going "ok, we have to keep the fat cats fat so they keep giving us illegal stock tips we can abuse for our own profit". And not that that never happens, but it seems like in the middle of the depths of the Covid pandemic, they just wanted to not add economic depression to the list of problems we had.
And sure, the when the government transfers large amounts of money it's like moving water with a leaky bucket and in this case maybe a colander, but I'd rather be sitting here 5 years later complaining about fraud than a depression.
I immediately noticed this as well. In many cases, they weren't even LLCs, just names.
Maybe my memory is hazy from that period, but I don't recall the clear call to action to request five-figure loans as an individual, (almost) all of which appear forgiven.
I looked for my family's businesses and other old friends and didn't find any of them. Texted my parents about this and they sound as surprised as me, and they have had a small local business for about a decade before Covid. My mom wasn't even aware that they would be eligible. And yet I see individuals, and others in my hometown whose businesses consist of only them and possibly one other person (likely part-time) made out with tens of thousands of dollars, all forgiven. Self-employed and sole proprietorships even. One family who I was always suspicious about how they always had whatever disposable money was needed for anything (the primary income was a local vending machine business) got $187k in this, according to this site. All forgiven.
So many loans in my small town! Since covid it seems like there is so much new money in the town, I guess now I know where it came from. No way all this was spent on legitimate payroll.
I had an LLC but didn't get a loan, I feel like a sucker but, at least I don't feel dirty.
The IRS has been investigating for years and secured at least 800 indictments.. I wonder if they’ll be defunded like all of the other arbitrary and self-destructive cuts across the government.
This is the best display of this data that I've seen so far, thanks for sharing OP. Truly wild seeing so many names of people I know raked in cash this way. Makes me start to understand where their seemingly endless money came from sometimes.
Found 2 million by my apartment complex forgiven. They've done nothing since but raise rents & built 450 new units that has made my apartment sound like a war zone for the last 2 years.
You know… I'm grateful that they moved quickly and decisively to bridge businesses through that time. We'd all be worse off without this having happened. I'm willing to accept a certain amount of waste for the importance of speed.
Local marketing? idk, just thought it was neat to put it on a map. I find it interesting to see the businesses that people in my neighborhood are running
I for one remain incredibly grateful that they shoveled money out the door, and imperfectly helped lots of small businesses provide some cash to some employees. If they had sat around worrying about the critics or trying to prevent any possible fraud before sending out the money, everything in our country would have frozen up that much more.
They could have just cut anyone who filed a W2 a check, paid to the same account (or address) as last year's IRS tax refund for that filer. It would have been even easier, more equitable, and certainly less fraudulent than this program. They probably would have seen a bump in late tax filings, too, getting more people onto the tax rolls.
It was extremely disheartening to see the way this program was applied. I can't think of any decent reason why the money had to pass through the hands of the employer first.
Matt Taibbi coined the term Griftopia. This problem needs to be investigated, but unfortunately it's being used as cover for larger crimes at the moment.
It's important to maintain perspective here, as one side has an immediate need for this issue to act as a shield. I'm happy to handle this grift, but first I'd like the corrupt politicians out. Sadly we may be in a holding pattern until midterms or all the way until the next presidential elections.
If Bush put us in a quagmire unknowingly, Trump is putting us in one deliberately.
Anyway, just randomly looking at one zip code in Manhattan:
Lots of people are blaming Trump for the abuse of those back in 2020. Let's not forget Congress played a role here (where Dems controlled the House). They passed the spending bill here. Meaning they are also responsible here. Congress controls the purse. They set the rules.
Also, let's not forget that businesses were forced shut down and everyone was crying that they were going to lose their business. If the government had spent the time to vet all these loans, there is no way they would have actually gotten the money out the door. There was a known calculus at the time that there would be fraud. But many businesses were in a rough spot and needed money.
It's so telling. My small city shows hundreds of genuine small businesses who got loans on the order of ten thousand dollars to one small business getting $800. It's great. All these places were struggling during the pandemic and absolutely were helped with it, and half a million dollars doesn't disrupt our local economy that much.
Until you see it.
A high end barber shop specializing in giving guys whiskey while they get haircuts employing like three people got $100k.
A company that turns used sails into handbags got $1 million.
An ancient seafood restaurant on the waterfront got $1 million.
Our city's busiest diner got $800k.
An S Corp called "capital servicing Inc" got $300k
A small office of architects got $300k
Flatbread Pizza company got $540k
The niche upperclass restaurant my girlfriend and I have reservations for valentines day for: $500k
The """acquisition""" company next door: $300k
I want to be clear here. For most of these big ticket loans, there is an equivalent sized loan to a genuine establishment that employs a lot of people. So many tiny loans to so many people who probably applied for an extremely reserved amount of money, "just to get by". All the businesses run by literal immigrants who asked for pittances, just so they could pay rent and keep operating as things evolved.
But holy fuck. This is like 50% grift. One stupidly oversized loan to a business that employs three people completely outclasses the hundred tiny loans to hardworking people.
But no, it's those on welfare who are the problem. It's those who have nowhere to legally sleep that are the problem. It's poor people buying chips with SNAP that are the problem. It's grants for science that are the problem.
I feel it's worth noting: This is how America has done everything though. There's ALWAYS been 50% grift in everything we do. We needed a railroad. Instead of building it like a public good, we gave away tons of land for free to the railroad companies as incentive to build the railroads, which allowed them to keep all the power in their hands, instead of being a public good that all companies could use. When Pons and Fleischman thought they had invented cold fusion, they publicly thought they could find a way to spend maybe $1 million to further their research and really confirm if it was the real deal. Their University turned around and asked congress for $25 million. Before anyone had even replicated meaningful results.
