by Andrea Widburg
American Thinker
As part of its coronavirus relief package, Congress passed the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”), a $349 billion fund to help businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Although any money business receives is denominated a loan, if the business can prove that it used the money to stay afloat and, especially, pay employees, the business can request that the loan be forgiven.
The PPP has been so popular that banks have reported to the Treasury Department that they are running out of those guaranteed funds. It’s questionable whether the fund will outlast the week.
To keep funds available, Mitch McConnell wanted to pass a single-issue bill, one that would do nothing more than infuse another $250 billion into the PPP. Democrats, however, are repeating the same behavior in which they engaged the last time Congress tried to allocate emergency funds for people hurt by the economic shutdown.