Politicians Opposing Student Loan Forgiveness, Yet Had PPP Loans Forgiven

PPP was necessary given the shutdowns, although technically I don’t think the feds ever shut down local businesses. Those were all state and local calls. Of course the recommendation from the top was to shutdown and thus PPP became federal policy.

It should also be pointed (again and again) that even without mandatory shutdowns, economic activity was still going to be down greatly during that period. Even in Sweden, which righties love pointing to, their personal mobility was down something like 90% in its depths. There is no such thing as a “free” pandemic (in terms of economic consequences) when 1,000,000 die.

 

If you think about it, it is kind of like someone kidnapping you and then issuing you a loan to pay for the food you eat everyday in your cell while you are kidnapped by them. That is what PPP loans during the COVID lockdowns were like.

 

The feds don't get to wipe their hands from this.

 

You can't even come to that conclusion because in many ways we have globally co-dependent economy. Even if the US didn't shut down at all, we would've still felt the ripples from policy throughout the rest of the world as I'm sure was the case with Sweden.

In other words, even if the US didn't shut down, if half of the rest of the world did including key economic partners, significant damage was going to be done.

You can't conclude "no shut down" means exclusively and directly caused by the pandemic itself rather than policy responding to the pandemic on a global scale.

 

I don’t have any specific evidence but I’d say a vast majority of businesses were not in any real danger. Company my wife works for took some, and they are in a mostly recession proof business. A lot of accounting and law firms took them.

There was also separately payroll tax relief that companies were pursuing until recently when they finally shut it down.

 

I think loans have their place but I largely agree with you here.

 

Bars and hospitality industry were destroyed (or would have been without PPP).

Early-ish in the pandemic I recall some woman who owned a flower shop lamenting that she had to close, but Wal-Mart nearby (deemed an “essential business”) would be packed with shoppers and they’d buy flowers too. That was obviously very stupid even from a public health perspective, because it’s just directing even more people to the densely populated store. But in a case like that maybe if she got PPP it kept her afloat, otherwise a small shop forced to close would be screwed (unless they can quickly adapt to a delivery model, possible… but still a burden imposed by her local govt).

 

I am sure it helped some, but it also benefited a lot of business owners who didn’t need it. To some degree I don’t get as worked up about it because it was a policy designed for an extraordinary situation and it is hard to get those right straight out of the box. At a minimum it did provide extra liquidity into the system that helped things stay afloat. It served a purpose although it was very inefficient.

Just because we did that doesn’t now we need to have a debt jubilee for everybody under the sun.

 

No, but it could mean these politicians are hypocritical turds.

Although I agree to deem them a hypocrite requires a deeper look to where the PPP money went. Case by case. If 100% was passed through to employee salaries, as intended, then no hypocrisy at all. If a chunk of it went to capital and some to employees, then it’s a bit hypocritical and a bit of a grey area depending on how much we are taking about. If very little went to employees or they paid themselves most of it (while also on the taxpayer dime for their congressional perks and salaries), then to the gallows with them.

 

Whether PPP was effective or not in my mind has nothing to do with college debt forgiveness. They are two completely different things for two different purposes.

During the pandemic payments and interest were stopped on college debts, so it’s not like there weren’t accommodations.

 

Different purposes but the congressman was bitching about shifting debts to others which is exactly what PPP did and he partook of it. That’s the hypocrisy.

 

Nah, there were lots of companies that took the PPP loans and didn’t need it. My company at the time could have but we choose not to as we were perfectly fine and didn’t want to be underhanded. It would have been a boon to us and been completely forgiven too.

Just because you can show a paper trail of paying those employees with at least 60% of PPP dollars does not mean the funds weren’t used to line the pockets of the owners. I saw it happen on a couple of occasions with other companies. Instead of using the company’s revenue to pay employees they used PPP funds, got it forgiven, and then kept the company funds as a windfall.

 

Well said. People want the PPP to be the Boogeyman, but I got one and was able to keep paying employees. Many don’t understand the impact the lockdown had on businesses. I was floating the company with my own money for months before the PPP. I didn’t fire one single person. Imagine me not getting real revenue but still paying the payroll, building lease, utilities, and other fixed costs for 4-6 months. Six figures easily. I was determined to stay in business, though. I took the PPP, but it was advertised as a forgivable loan prior to disbursement. That’s much different from a school loan where you know going into it that you are on the hook.

I’m proud of how I used the PPP to keep my employees and their families ok during the tough times. Many abused the loans, but that wasn’t everyone.

 

True, but it’s harder to make a “fraud” argument if they used the funds in that way - i.e. fully paid the employees. But if they didn’t need it and took it anyway (for business lucky enough to have their revenues mostly uninterrupted), AND argue against the student loan issue, yeah that’s sort of hypocritical even if they followed the rules as laid out.

As I said, in a lot of cases you’d basically need an audit to see how their financials actually shook out and how PPP filled the holes.

 

Can you post ncaa recruiting rules next. Both got equal enforcement

 

And that forgiveness bar was very low. Many people used it pay the expenses and their profits jumped because the taxpayer covered their expenses while their revenue loss was minimal.

 

Lots of doctors, hell our own Surgeon General, remain willfully ignorant because the politics are more important than the science. Sadly, politics is overriding intelligence and common sense across all levels of education

 

Politicians are hypocritical. Dog bites man.

 

We did the same. They really werent loans in the grand scheme because the expectation was never paying back.

 

And way too many schools qualifying for these subsidized loans. Obama tried early on to put some modest reporting rules in place to require colleges to disclose graduation rates and salaries. Higher ed, second largest lobbying budget to medicine only, lost their chit and both parties quickly killed even modest reform