U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) on Jan. 3 applauded recent notice from the Small Business Administration (SBA) that it is going to refer default COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to the U.S. Treasury Department to recover billions of taxpayer dollars.
“2024 is already bringing new opportunities for accountability at Biden’s mismanaged SBA,” said Sen. Ernst, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Small Business Committee. “After nearly a year of oversight, the agency finally answered my calls to collect billions of taxpayer dollars in delinquent and fraudulent COVID loans.”
Sen. Ernst has championed efforts in Congress toward collecting pandemic-era loans. Most recently, she released a Nov. 14, 2023, report, titled “Small Business COVID-19 Fraud: Three Years Later State of Play,” showing how the SBA was scammed for hundreds of billions of dollars from COVID relief programs, and she pushed federal investigators and the Biden administration to keep working to retrieve the money.
SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman responded to Sen. Ernst and her Small Business Committee colleagues in both chambers of Congress in a Dec. 28 letter, saying she would establish a 60-day goodwill exemption period this month and in February to support borrowers in re-entering repayment.
“SBA will also conduct a comprehensive outreach campaign to inform them of this opportunity,” Guzman wrote in her letter to the lawmakers. “This is also in the best interest of the taxpayer, because bringing small businesses back into repayment is the best way to optimize the probability of collecting on outstanding loans.”
Sen. Ernst on Wednesday said she will keep working “to ensure the more than $200 billion the agency doled out to fraudsters does not go unpunished or uncollected.”
“And as always, I am committed to making Washington bureaucrats squeal and protecting our hard-earned dollars from waste and abuse,” she said.