Posts Tagged Paycheck Protection Program

The American Rescue Plan included a program meant to keep small businesses owned by disadvantaged groups in the restaurant industry open during the height of the pandemic. The $28.8 billion grant program—known as the Restaurant Revitalization Fund—gave money to over 100,000 businesses, with some grants going as high as $10 million.

Covid Stimulus Watch now includes recipient data from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). We’ve added more than 123,000 entries that amount to almost $8 billion across 15 ARPA programs.

President Biden announced in this State of the Union Address that the Department of Justice will appoint a chief prosecutor responsible for investigating pandemic fraud.  

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), part of the original federal stimulus package, the CARES Act, was meant to keep workers on the job and small businesses alive during a time of financial uncertainty. But did it work? The answer to that may be unclear, but nearly all the loans - over 80% - have been forgiven.

More than 190,000 American workers have been laid off since March across 1,900 companies that received loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The companies intended to support 251,000 workers – instead, they laid off 76 percent of them. About one in eight of those workers lost their jobs permanently.