House Small Business Committee Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez, a New York Democrat, is also negotiating a bipartisan bill, a spokesperson said. Other proposals call for direct subsidies, and Congress could act on individual measures or include them in a broader stimulus package expected to be negotiated in July.
“The needs going forward are going to be significant,” said Holly Wade, director of research and policy analysis for the National Federation of Independent Business. “The economy’s certainly a long way from normal economic activity, there’s still many business restrictions on how owners can open or expand.”
Like other government programs in Europe, the U.S. stimulus package likely helped prevent job losses during the lockdowns. Three months into the crisis, many of those programs are being phased out or nearing expiration, leaving companies to face difficult decisions.
Created in haste as lockdowns brought business activity to a halt in March, the PPP had a chaotic launch. With rules coming late and repeatedly changing, many U.S. borrowers worried they’d be stuck with debt, unable to convert it into grants. Public outcry about larger entities including Shake Shack Inc. and the Los Angeles Lakers getting funding, plus threats of audits and criminal action by the Trump administration, prompted companies to return loans even if they thought they were eligible.
Data released by the SBA show that the amount of loans approved actually declined by billions of dollars in May as loans were returned and duplicates were canceled. The SBA hasn’t provided details about the cancellations but told the U.S. Government Accountability Office that more than 170,000 loans totaling about $38.5 billion had been canceled as of May 31 and that cancellations were continuing, according to a GAO report released Thursday.
There have been reports of small businesses returning their loans out of concern they wouldn’t qualify for forgiveness because of a lack of guidance, and some borrowers were afraid to close their loans or start using funds, “resulting in additional economic stress for employees,” the GAO report said.
By mid-May, the process had smoothed and the majority of owners who applied got a loan. A U.S. Census Bureau survey showed that 72% of respondents on average had received funds through June 13.
Among those least likely to use PPP were Black- and Hispanic-owned businesses, with more than nine out of ten having no employees, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.
They include Crystal Thomas, 30, the sole owner of an event-planning company in Atlanta. She said that she was frustrated that larger businesses were able to get funding and attributed her lack of success getting a PPP loan to not having a personal relationship with a lender to help navigate the process.
“I don’t believe that was fair,” Thomas said. “You’re able to see where other people were given favor, and that should have not been the case.”