Stimulus loans a boon for the well connected
WASHINGTON — Car dealers and private schools, restaurants and doctors, hotels and contractors all got money from the program established to help small businesses survive the coronavirus. But a subset of the list of recipients reads like a guide to a professional political class that thrives in the nation’s capital no matter what is happening elsewhere in the country.
When the Trump administration publicly detailed Monday many of the beneficiaries of the $660 billion forgivable loan program, it showed money going to dozens of the lobbying and law firms, political consulting shops and advocacy groups that make up the political industrial complex.
Advertising and fundraising firms assisting President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign were listed alongside companies doing polling and direct mail for his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Donor-supported think tanks on both sides of the ideological divide got money, as did lobbying firms that have seen a surge in business related to the pandemic.
There is no evidence of any string-pulling on behalf of politically connected outfits, and recipients said they applied for the loans for the same reason as other businesses around the country: to save jobs.
But the use of taxpayer funds to prop up Washington’s permanent political apparatus seemed especially discordant to some critics against the backdrop of a pandemic that has shined a bright light on gaping disparities between the haves and the havenots.
“Every lobbying firm, political consultant and huge corporation that received a loan is a reminder that this program was administered to cater to the well-connected and powerful over small businesses,” said Austin Evers, the executive director of the liberal watchdog group American Oversight.
The group has filed public records requests for communications between the Small Business Administration, which administered the loan program, and lobbyists with connections to the Trump administration who represented some applicants for assistance.
As the program was being developed and put into action, there was an effort to limit the aid going to some of the businesses most emblematic of professional Washington: lobbying and political consulting firms.
The version of the stimulus bill originally passed by the House included a provision that would have barred businesses from counting lobbyists’ salaries toward payroll calculations of how much money could be sought. But after negotiations between the House, the Senate and the administration, the restriction fell out of the final version of the legislation signed into law by Trump in March.