Sen. Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that the Treasury Department will have to disclose some of the companies that received the $670 billion in taxpayer-funded small-business relief despite Secretary Steven Mnuchin refusing to do so.
Negotiations are underway after Mnuchin came under fire for saying last week that the Trump administration wouldn’t be transparent about who received the loans.
“We floated some ideas back and forth, and we’re going to keep working on it,” Rubio said of the negotiations with Mnuchin. “There will be disclosure.”
During a Senate Small Business Committee hearing last week, Mnuchin said that the names and amounts of specific small-business relief loans were “proprietary information” and, for many sole proprietors, is “confidential information.”
Rubio sympathized with such small-business fears but said that some disclosure would be needed.
“The purpose of the program is to help small businesses, not to harm them or make them feel uncomfortable. But, look, if you have a big loan, you know, there’s no avoiding [disclosure],” Rubio said.
The Treasury and the Small Business Administration’s coronavirus relief program, called the Paycheck Protection Program, was established to help struggling small businesses through loans as part of the massive $2.3 trillion CARES Act relief package that President Trump signed in March. Businesses can receive up to $10 million in taxpayer-funded loans that will be forgiven by the federal government if at least 60% of the loan goes toward hiring back employees and payroll costs.
The Trump administration is also blocking federal watchdogs from overseeing more than $1 trillion in coronavirus relief spending.
The inspectors general leading the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, an independent panel created to oversee implementation of the relief spending, are currently unable to get information from the Treasury regarding many of the businesses that are beneficiaries of the federal spending.
The inspectors general said in a letter sent to congressional committees last week that an “ambiguity” in the CARES Act allowed Trump administration officials to issue legal rulings greatly curtailing the independent oversight of the bill. This interpretation of the CARES Act would significantly limit the inspectors general in their ability to gather information about who benefited from large parts of the law, such as the Paycheck Protection Program or the $454 billion in loans the Treasury allocated for specific industries hurt by the pandemic.
Republicans and Democrats have both pushed the administration to be more transparent with the loan recipients in recent weeks. At the end of May, 38 Republicans and 231 Democrats voted in favor of a bill asking for greater disclosure of the small-business relief program.
