WASHINGTON – The federal government has supported loans totaling up to $ 150 million for Planned Parenthood members in recent weeks, according to data from the Federal Salary Protection Program released Monday by the Small Business Administration.
The loans angered conservatives against abortion rights, who applauded last year when President Donald Trump successfully moved to prevent the organization from accessing the federal government’s main family planning fund.
“Planned Parenthood shouldn’t have received a dime from the government’s PPP program,” Rep. Doug Collins, R-Georgia, a close ally of Trump, said in a tweet. “It is sickly!”
The Planned Parenthood money was just one of many revelations that caught the attention of lawmakers and activists from across the political spectrum as they studied the names of more than 600,000 loan recipients on Monday. Ultimately, Congress and Trump imposed few restrictions on eligibility for the loan program, which was designed to help struggling small businesses and nonprofits meet payroll during the coronavirus crisis.
But in addition to restaurants, family stores, and churches, the beneficiary list includes a private school named for a grandson of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, companies with ties to lawmakers and their families, Washington lobby stores, investment firms from Wall Street and private jet managers.
Even the educational affiliate of Americans for Tax Reform, a group led by Grover Norquist, which once said it wanted to reduce the size of the government to the size that could drown in a bathtub, took a loan of $ 150,000 to $ 350,000.
Low-interest loans are converted into taxpayer-funded grants, a cash gift, provided the beneficiaries keep their workers employed. So far, the Small Business Administration has tracked $ 521 billion in loans that senior administration officials say have helped nearly 50 million Americans stay on the job. The program still has nearly $ 132 billion in its coffers.
The agency released data only on recipients who raised at least $ 150,000, leaving 86.5 percent of borrowers unnamed, according to senior administration officials. And the loan amounts were granted in ranges: $ 150,000 to $ 350,000; $ 350,000 to $ 1 million; $ 1 million to $ 2 million; $ 2 million to $ 5 million; and $ 5 million to $ 10 million.
At least 43 Planned Parenthood members received loans of $ 65 million to $ 150 million, according to SBA records. Planned Parenthood withdrew from the federal government’s main family planning fund last year after Trump issued a regulation that would otherwise have limited his ability to advise patients about abortion.
Rachel Bovard, a former assistant to the Republican Senate Party and chief policy director of the Conservative Association Institute, said Republican lawmakers hoped Planned Parenthood would be banned from borrowing under the membership rules.
“An investigation into how Planned Parenthood received these funds for the intention of the members who voted seems justified,” he said in a text message.
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But Planned Parenthood was not alone in jumping on the recipient list, and social networking sites were full of calls to various entities to return the money.
The Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston, New Jersey, supported by the Kushner family for many years, was approved for a $ 1 million to $ 2 million loan just eight days after the program was created. The limited liability company Yeezy, owned by billionaire musician and Trump acquaintance Kanye West, also borrowed between $ 2 and $ 5 million.
Clay Lacy Aviation, which offered its private clients credit from client accounts after taking out a loan, raised between $ 5 and $ 10 million. It was one of at least four aviation management companies that received loans and money from the separate Treasury Department program to subsidize the airlines.
Washington’s industry of influence – “the swamp,” in the modern political lexicon – was not excluded from a program that some of its members worked hard to shape.
Wiley Rein and APCO Worldwide took loans of $ 5 million to $ 10 million, while Miller and Chevalier, who lobbies for McDonald’s, Bechtel and CVS Health, among other clients, took loans between $ 2 and $ 5 million. So did the National Trust for Historic Preservation; former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s consultant, Albright Stonebridge; and the public affairs company DCI Group. The recipient list includes dozens of lobbyists, associations, government affairs consultants and expert groups.
“In deciding whether to accept PPP loans, the companies considered not only highly technical legal criteria, but also the inevitable public scrutiny and potential for congressional oversight,” said David Mortlock, an attorney for the Washington office of Willkie Farr and Gallagher, who counseled clients on the show, “It seems some recipients may not have carefully considered one of these factors.”
