Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, defending his decision to withhold information about who was receiving Paycheck Protection Program loans from the coronavirus stimulus passed back in March, now insists that the administration never agreed to make that information public. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.)
Mnuchin backed off his stance a bit last week, saying that the administration would make some information available, the names and businesses of companies that got $150,000 or more, though it would not release the exact amounts. At the same time, he says "This was a program we never agreed to full transparency, and the reason for that is the loan amount is based upon the amount of salary." Except that PPP program is an existing loan program with the Small Business Administration that has released information dating back to 1991. And except for the part where the SBA website says the agency intends to provide "loan-specific data to the public." And the part where Sen. Marco Rubio, who wrote the legislation, said "SBA is eventually going to have to release that. I always thought they were going to have to, and if they don't, we'll make them do it." So, yes, when Donald Trump signed the measure into law, the administration was pretty much agreeing to full transparency.
But, get this, Mnuchin also says "What I wanted to make sure was for the very small businesses we would not disclose the loan amount and the company name. Because if we did that, you would be able to tell people's compensation, and we didn't think that was fair." That's totally believable, right? They care so damned much about the little guy. But we're not going to see whether these loans are truly going out to those smallest of businesses. So that we don't see how communities of color are getting left out. So we don't see whether or not the loans are going to the regions and the sectors that most need the program. Like whether 55% of Nebraska businesses are still getting the loans while less than 20% of New York's business are receiving them.
That means the administration is ultimately going to disclose about 14% of borrowers, total, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. About 86% of the loans have been $150,000 or less from the data released by the SBA so far. That's not a whole lot of transparency.