Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says he will talk to lawmakers about small business bailout disclosure

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the decision to keep that information confidential “only serves to raise further suspicions about how the funds are being distributed and who is actually benefiting.”

Rep. Katie Porter and Sen. Kamala Harris, both Democrats, wrote to Mnuchin and Small Business Administration head Jovita Carranza on Friday urging disclosure. Porter and Harris demanded the two agencies “fulfill all outstanding FOIA requests” for information about the PPP loans, citing the “unprecedented size and nature of the PPP” and “numerous examples of fraud and abuse that have already surfaced.”

As of Friday, the PPP has supported 4.5 million loans for a total loan value of $512 billion, with roughly $130 billion still to be spent.

Whether those loans have gone to the businesses most in need has been a point of contention. The program went through several rounds of guidance adjusting the stipulations around the loans after disclosures that some public companies, including the owners of Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and Shake Shack, were among the recipients. They, and other public companies, returned the loans following public outcry. 

In an April push to inject the program with an additional $310 billion, Democrats sought to push for more assurances that those funds would go to smaller businesses and minority groups. The deal struck between Republicans and Democrats allocated $60 billion of that sum for rural and minority groups.

On Monday, Sen Marco Rubio, R-Fla., chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business, tweeted that the committee would be targeting the disparity of the impact of the financial crisis on minority businesses in the next phase of the program. 

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/15/mnuchin-says-he-will-talk-to-lawmakers-about-ppp-disclosure.html