I am not commenting on whether or not they should have been. I am not interested in tying them back to discussion of any other loans or loan forgiveness.
Why call them loans if they are not?
In: Economics
Originally at application they were loans to be repaid, then it was discussed to make them forgivable if you met certain criteria and required all documentations to be certified by a CPA
It’s just the way they were structured. It was a loan you had to pay back.. unless you did x,y,z requirements.
They were targeted mostly at business owners who tend to vote Republican and don’t accept “handouts” from “big government”. Easily forgiven loans on the other hand…
What the loans were actually spent on weren’t audited unless they were over i think 200,000. Lots of businesses in my town that weren’t struggling at all due to covid got new trucks and equipment. Meanwhile I didn’t take a payout because covid didn’t effect my business. I felt like an idiot after seeing nearly every other business in town take one including law offices and the energy company.
Why was the Patriot Act called The Patriot act?
Think of them more as PPP “Grants” than loans. It helps with people who didnt meet the restrictions that they would have to pay them back, and not blind side them.
My state had whats called a “Cancelable student loan” for national guard soldiers. If you made a C or higher in the class, you didnt have to pay the loan back. But if they called it a grant, people would assume they would never have to be paid back even if you made an F
This is a leading, dishonest question.
The reason why it’s called a *loan,* is because the money would be put back into the economy. People will pay their rent, pay for groceries and put money into circulation.
People can’t spend if they’re dying of starvation or dying on the streets.
Fun fact: SNAP, formerly known as food stamps pays for itself, by stimulating on average 1.50 in spending for every dollar spent on the program. Some states, that number’s close to 2$. It’s the most effective means of economic stimulus the government has at its disposal. You can also buy seeds with SNAP benefits because it’s managed by the US Agriculture bureau and was intended to help poor farmers and miners. John F. Kennedy actually was a proponent of this idea, as an expansion to commodity foods, to let households instead decide how to best shop for food.
Because if they had announced free handouts for business owners and CEOs in the middle of a pandemic, people would legitimately have rioted.
I strongly suspect that it was a budget accounting issue. Categorizing them as loans allows the government to pretend they will be paid back in full, and not count against the cost of the program.
More importantly why can’t we sue the US Government for forgiving them the way Biden is sued for forgiving Student Loans?
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