Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.|Scott Heins/Getty Images
Senate Democrats on Friday contacted the Trump administration to launch a fuller photo of where billions of dollars in emergency bank loan have actually landed, as Congress remains deadlocked over moneying the financial rescue effort.
In a letter to the Treasury Department and Small Business Administration, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for information on the $350 billion Income Protection Program. They’re also looking for, numbers for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Emergency Situation Grants Program, another distressed SBA center meant to hurry help to small businesses hit by disasters.
Amongst their concerns, they requested for a breakdown of Paycheck Security Program loans paid out by demographics. They also requested for the volume of loans paid out to big restaurant chain operators that can get loans even if they go beyond the program’s 500- worker limitation. Shake Shack said Friday that it got a $10 million Paycheck Defense Program loan through JPMorgan Chase, even as the hamburger chain revealed strategies to raise $75 million in the stock market.
” As Congress works to offer critical funding for these programs, we compose to ask that you provide extra data and info about how loans and grants have actually been dispersed,” the senators said.
The SBA and Treasury did not right away respond to requests for comment.
Congress and the Federal Reserve are pouring trillions of dollars into the economy in an unmatched effort to ward off enormous layoffs and a possibly deep economic crisis originating from the coronavirus pandemic. That has triggered concern amongst some lawmakers and advocacy groups that there aren’t sufficient controls or oversight of the cash.
The SBA has actually released a brand-new breakdown of Income Defense Program loans authorized as of Thursday, when funding went out and loan approvals came to a halt. The program launched on April 3.
According to the SBA, almost 1.7 million loans were authorized for approximately $206,000 The construction industry was the top recipient of money from the program.
About 4 percent of the accepted loans were for $1 million or more. Those loans in total– about $1524 billion– represented 44.5 percent of all the cash authorized under the program.
For the first time, the SBA released figures for 15 of the program’s top lending institutions, though it did not determine the banks. The unnamed lending institution with the greatest volume approved 27,307 loans for a total of $14 billion.
JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the U.S., declared Friday that it was the most respected Paycheck Security Program lending institution up until now. The bank said it funded around $14 billion in loans to services that use more than 1.1 million people. It has about $4.5 billion in applications completely processed and prepared to be sent to the SBA along with an extra $20 billion in applications that it’s overcoming.
” Chase has protected more funding for small businesses than anyone else in the industry, and we’re fully prepared to help many, much more once additional funding is authorized,” a JPMorgan representative said.
