Quote:
Originally Posted by RickFLM4
The PPP program was not designed to require demonstrated financial hardship. Again, from Day 1 it was designed as a grant as long as criteria were met and a loan if they were not met. They called them “forgivable loans” and almost every company that applied for these did so with the expectation it would be a grant. They were not loans that were forgiven in a surprise move.
As I said, the wisdom of PPP is fair to debate. But student loans have always been designed to be repaid. That is not debatable and trying to justify forgiving loans after the fact by citing programs designed as grants or bailouts from the start is just a bad argument.
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And the reason it was designed that way, and with pretty loose qualification rules, was to get the money out fast so that it would have the most impact. Congress accepted that there would be a lot of “free riders” (to be nice about it), to get speed and save the jobs that were intended. Imagine if the usual bunch of federal rules had been imposed: a new bureaucracy to evaluate applications, etc.
I wasn’t a fan of the PPP but I studied it pretty closely before recommending we not take it at my company.