Taxpayers Bail Out Seattle Businesses

Remember all of those COVID loans to help keep struggling businesses afloat? They were critical for many to keep the lights on and keep their employees paid. But when those loans were forgiven some legit questions should have been asked. 🤔

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It goes without saying that the businesses who took loans didn't do anything wrong; they didn’t really have a choice since they had to shut down because the government said so. The questions folks are asking now are about how the loans were doled out (and forgiven).

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So, here are Five Fast Facts on Seattle’s COVID loan forgiveness:

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1. 😱 How Much? A recent analysis by openthebooks.com (a government transparency watchdog) shows that over 600 businesses in Seattle had their loans forgiven, ranging from $1M to $10M each. The overall price tag to taxpayers is $1.3B. Yes, BILLION, with a “B”.
2. 1️⃣ Example 1 - Seattle Goodwill Industries received a single loan of $10M, and it was forgiven. The org said all 54 of their facilities were closed down for a period of time during the pandemic, and this money helped their people survive. Okay, Goodwill is a worthy cause, right?
3. 2️⃣ Example 2 - The Seattle Times and its subsidiaries received two loans for a total of almost $12M, and both were forgiven. Um…who thinks it’s a good idea for any newspaper to be funded by the government??
4. 3️⃣ Example 3 - Many Seattle law firms got PPP loans, and one of the biggest, Lane Powell PC, was forgiven $8.4M. Should we be surprised by this?
5. ✔️ ⁉️ Lack Of Oversight - Of the $800B in PPP loans granted around the country, over 90% of them have been forgiven with little or no oversight, and more are being forgiven as time goes on. It is expected that the final tally will be close to 100%. It figures that the government picks this thing to be super efficient on, doesn’t it?

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🔥Bottom line: All three of these examples in Seattle have annual revenues of roughly $100M or more. Maybe they were legit and completely honest about needing this money to help their people. But some estimates say as high as 10%-15% of PPP loans were suspected of fraud. That’s tens of billions of dollars (if not more), with virtually no oversight in the forgiveness process. Given that taxpayers are footing the bill for every penny of this, shouldn’t we demand a little more scrutiny? It’s not as if the national debt is a problem or anything. The full list of Seattle PPP loans is here, if you’re curious.

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What do you think about this situation, and what should be done about it?

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