Temporary pay protection

Congratulations are not in order for the Trump administration, which over the weekend released the names of about 660,000 recipients of loans granted through the $659 billion Paycheck Protection Program, after weeks of absurd insistence such information should stay secret.

Taxpayers deserve to know where the money went, in part to hold businesses accountable for pledges they made to keep workers employed, as promised in order to be eligible for the loans. Still, the names revealed comprise only 15% of the money disbursed. More transparency is required.

One troubling revelation from the data released is that states hardest hit by coronavirus didn’t pocket loans anything close to proportional to the economic devastation they suffered. North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, where the coronavirus didn’t do much damage, got federal help for 90% of eligible small business payroll. Only about 75% of hard-hit New York and California’s small business payroll received loans.

The Treasury Department, using data self-reported by businesses, claims PPP saved 51.1 million jobs. But how much longer will those jobs be safe?

The whole $2 trillion stimulus package depended for its success on a parallel effort by individual Americans to social distance, wear masks and take other steps to quell the virus.

The effort couldn’t hold. Because states reopened too fast, the virus spread far and wide, and now economic pain endures. Congress rightly extended a June 30 deadline to seek PPP loans to Aug. 8. The pandemic won’t be anywhere close to over by that date. What then?