Politicians Opposing Student Loan Forgiveness, Yet Had PPP Loans Forgiven

Well, I am in favor of forgiven none of them. Why doesn’t gov address the problem of college cost rather than do nothing other than likely exacerbate it? So the person who became a plumber gets nothing but the art history major needs $50k?!?

 

a ppp loan is a “loan” isn’t it?

 

Too many unqualified "colleges"

 

So one bad policy deserves another?

At least the PPP was for a specific one time extraordinary purpose, even though it was greatly abused and excessive. Student loan forgiveness mostly serves no specific purpose but has negative ramifications.

I’m not opposed to targeted forgiveness based upon need or merit, and/or some restructuring. Or perhaps some modified bankruptcy process

 

Here's a link to The Cares Act

Text - H.R.748 - 116th Congress (2019-2020): CARES Act | Congress.gov | Library of Congress

(b) Forgiveness.--An eligible recipient shall be eligible for
forgiveness of indebtedness on a covered loan in an amount equal to the
sum of the following costs incurred and payments made during the covered
period:
(1) Payroll costs.
(2) Any payment of interest on any covered mortgage
obligation (which shall not include any prepayment of or payment
of principal on a covered mortgage obligation).
(3) Any payment on any covered rent obligation.
(4) Any covered utility payment.

 

Hey, it's a "Loan" vs. a "Loan"....just like a "woman" can be a "man"

Don't you folks understand anything? Science?

In one case the person taking the loan is violating the terms of the agreement. In the other case not so; but, don't let facts get in the way.

 

Pretty naive for people to believe people used the PPP for its intended purpose. We'll never truly know but I'm curious as to what percentage of it was actually used to keep people employed at all. I know several people who took PPP despite not having to shut down. Several people profited. They don't outright say it but when a tree cutting service doesn't miss out on work but "qualifies" for a loan something is wrong...

I also don't think this is a partisan issue although obviously it's hypocritical that pubs are against student loan forgiveness.

 

It should be a process more akin to bankruptcy, which is a process fully available to the plumber who gets in financial trouble (even in individual bk, let alone if they structured as an llc or other business entity). Whereas bk isn’t available to the art history major get rid of student loan debt. Your scenario sounds unfair to the plumber, but the current scenario isn’t entirely fair to the proverbial “art history major” either.

I wasn’t a fan of the blanket “debt forgiveness” proposals, although it seems to be a big enough issue that maybe it needs to be a mass “restructuring” that’s relatively easy to obtain rather than outright forgiveness. Forgiveness should only be for those who are in more dire financial shape, essentially people who would otherwise be considered bankrupt by their debt but for the fact student loans can’t be expunged in bk.

 

I chose to go to college I didn’t choose for morons to shutter my business for no reason.

 

Those morons know FAR more about Covid than you ever will.

 

"I know several people who took PPP despite not having to shut down." -

Shutting down was not a requited to qualify for a loan ... as the loan was to help businesses stay open and keep employment levels at pre-covid levels in the face of diminished operations, revenues. Forgiveness of a PPP loan was tied to maintaining headcount and payroll during covid.

"doesn't miss out on work but "qualifies" for a loan something is wrong" -

PPP#1 did not require a reduction in business to qualify. The purpose was to keep people employed, ergo the name "Payroll Protection Program -
KEEPING AMERICAN WORKERS PAID AND EMPLOYED ACT"

I personally worked with four companies that secured a total of 8 PPP loans (#1 and #2) + two EIDL loans .... and I saw precisely how it worked the way it was intended. Seven of the PPP loans were fully forgiven, and one was partially forgiven. Both EIDL loans are being retired as per the SBA's requirements.

 

Good for you. Given the mandated shut down I don't have a problem with companies that used it appropriately but when people didn't have a reduction in business or shut down what's the point of the loan?

People used that to acquire more equipment in some cases or fraudulently claimed it was needed to keep people employed? In any event, just because one can doesn't mean they should and they're were plenty of people who qualified for the loan that did not need them.

 

The problem was they needed to get the money into the hands of the businesses immediately. Setting up a valid screening process wasn't really an option. It was shoot first ask questions later, for the good of the economy.

Personally we got like 98% of ours repaid because we used it to pay employees and utilities/rent, as it was intended. This was for a bar that saw significant drop in business before anything was even mandated. I forget why we didn't get the full 100% forgiven I think we misused some on payroll taxes from the wrong quarter or something. We ended up like 6k out of pocket.

 

Yeah what do I know with a double major in biochem and biology. Stick to your law practice this is out of your realm.

 

When the CARES Act was passed, folks didn't know the severity of the pandemic and how long the shutdown would last so .... no one knew which companies would suffer and by how much. Thus, loan qualifications were established .... and then forgiveness rules were promulgated.

And I agree, there was much fraud and abuse of the PPP .... just like there is fraud and abuse in Medicare, Medicaid, and just about every government program that exists. I just read that the White House pharmacy was dispensing controlled substance to people without prescription and to people who shouldn't have used that dispensary.

 

A loan paying for something you would've been able to pay if the government didn't forcibly shut your business down is not the same as forgiving a loan voluntarily taken where someone bet on themselves and they lost.

This is nowhere close to the same thing.

To be fair to those taking out student loans now, just by the numbers, if it's going to cost you $75K to $80K per year for four years in college, and you need loans to pay for all of that, you're probably not going to pay that off. By the time you start making enough money to pay greater chunks, the interest is already killing you. It's not an intelligence thing, it's an experience thing. Every 18-year-old honor student thinks they're that smart when the reality is that they don't have a clue what the competition is in the real world. It's not their fault. But we have to start treating people like adults at some point.

 

Because of the cause and the choice in the loan.

Think of it this way, nobody forced a kid to go college when he/she couldn't afford it.

The government FORCED businesses to shut down during the pandemic. PPP loans were a way of keeping these businesses afloat after the government FORCED them to shut down. Think of it like borrowing a lawnmower your neighbor was going to use, you break it, so you pay the neighbor the value of the lawnmower. This is obviously a bit a more complicated than that because government policy and the pandemic disrupted cash flow of these businesses. And employees are paid periodically, so the amount of money required was going to be a lot more.

 

Not a popular opinion, but this is largely a consequence of government subsidizing student loans.

If the loans are this easy to get, universities are free to charge whatever they want because either rich people will pay for it, or government subsidized loans will. And it's all the same to them.

Remove that subsidization, and all of a sudden, college either becomes a place for really rich people and really smart people on scholarship or private loan, not a place for typical people. And universities will either have to live with that massive change, or they're going to have to adjust to the market, cut the administrative bullshit and fluff, and lower their prices to meet demand. I'd wager when push comes to shove, they'd go with the latter.

 

There’s always going to be fraud whenever govt makes “assistance” available. You have to accept that crooks and morally bankrupt people will certainly attempt to steal a certain % of anything from the govt, and many of those people will call themselves conservative.

The question is what to do about it. The COVID program was probably harder to determine legitimacy than just about any other type of aid a govt would historically offer the poor. For some you’d basically need an IRS audit to determine if the aid was appropriate and distributed to employees appropriately, some might have actually been a close call or a “loophole” - using the funds for the business to buy capital (to actually expand their business) rather than strictly to pay employees. I think some of these people probably need to pay back the loans even if it wasn’t criminal (if not enough was strictly to employees or if the revenues were never really impacted). Of course in egregious criminal cases you had crooks basically using PPP for buying themselves expensive boats and cars or totally lying about the # employees. Those sorts of lowlifes basically deserve the death penalty. I’m guessing politicians who took PPP mostly span these latter types of frauds as they tend to stretch legality as much as possible or seem to assume they are above the law. Ethics? I don’t need no stinking ethics.