If you’re a liberal policy wonk and your policy agenda is catching flack from NPR, you know you’ve lost the plot. The network has a well-known
liberal bias
, but even it can’t help but admit that the massive pandemic-era “stimulus” spending plans look worse and worse in hindsight with every day that passes.
Chief among the failed stimulus programs is the Paycheck Protection Program, PPP for short. This was one of the biggest pieces of the stimulus, totaling
$835 billion
taxpayer dollars invested, and it was the brainchild of both Republicans and Democrats. The idea behind PPP was simple: The federal government would give “loans,” which were really grants, as most weren’t meant to be repaid, to struggling small businesses to help them stay afloat amid lockdowns and a plummeting pandemic economy.
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Yet the idea behind the PPP and the reality of its results couldn’t be further apart.
“When the Paycheck Protection Program launched during the pandemic shutdowns of spring 2020, it immediately became a chaotic free-for-all,” NPR
reports
. “Billions of dollars went to companies owned by wealthy celebrities, including Tom Brady and Khloe Kardashian, and companies that thrived during COVID, like many manufacturing and construction firms. Government officials acknowledge that the program was rife with fraud and did not weed out undeserving applicants.”
The program’s loose-to-nonexistent verification requirements and the way government bureaucrats gave away our money like candy on Halloween both resulted in a scammer’s dream. Billions of dollars were stolen by fraudsters. Even the Small Business Administration itself
admits
that, at minimum, 70,000 of the loans it gave out are potentially fraudulent. (And that’s likely an underestimate).
The $835 billion program wasn’t just rife with fraud, though; it was also wildly ineffective.
A
study
from MIT economist David Autor and other researchers found that it only saved 2 million-3 million jobs. While that might sound decent, it comes out to an astounding cost to taxpayers of $170,000-$257,000 per job protected. You know, much more than most of these jobs actually pay! Does that sound like a good deal to you?
“It’s as if you came home from work one day, walked into your kitchen, and noticed, ‘Oh my God, there’s a small fire by the stove — I need to put this out,’” Autor
explained
. “But you don’t have a fire extinguisher. So you go outside, connect a huge hose to a fire hydrant, and come in and douse your entire house with water. Well, that would certainly put out the fire, but it would be a very costly thing to do.”
It gets worse. The
study
also found that only somewhere between 23% to 34% of the money went to jobs that actually would’ve been eliminated without it. Yes, seriously: More than 60% of it went to jobs for which it was totally unnecessary.
The massive redistribution of wealth also reinforced inequality. Again
per Autor
, PPP was “highly regressive”; in other words, it helped the well-off more. Indeed, approximately 75% of the benefits went to people in the top 20% of income earners. Don’t forget, this is what both parties, Republicans and Democrats, decided to do with your money.
When everything is said and done, the Paycheck Protection Program may go down in history as one of the biggest wastes of taxpayer money of all time. You know it’s bad when even NPR can’t help but admit it.
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Brad Polumbo (
@Brad_Polumbo
) is a co-founder of
Based-Politics.com
, a co-host of the Based Politics
podcast
, and a Washington Examiner contributor.
