Following a series of stories by the Miami Herald addressing the backlog of unforgiven Paycheck Protection Program loans and the disproportionate impact of this backlog on minority communities, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has called on the director of the U.S. Small Business Administration to speed up the forgiveness process and disclose how the agency is working with minority and low-income communities to ensure eligible PPP loans are forgiven.
“These delays have left deserving small business owners under a cloud of ambiguity or saddled with looming debt payments that they simply cannot afford,” Rubio, a Republican and one of the architects of the PPP program, wrote in the letter to Isabella Guzman, the administrator of the SBA. “This is unacceptable. I call on your agency to do its job and ensure that every PPP loan recipient that is eligible and wishes to apply for loan forgiveness receives it without delay.”
The program, created as part of the 2020 COVID-19 relief CARES ACT, provided loans for small businesses. The loans didn’t need to be paid back if used for approved purposes, such as payroll. The program was administered by the SBA, which tasked individual lenders with vetting prospective borrowers, disbursing the cash and approving applications for loan forgiveness.
