Over on Truth Social, Donald Trump publishes musings that range from the hilarious to the senile. Only when the stenographers of the legacy media go apoplectic over his delusions regarding the 2020 elections is the general public reminded of the meta mantra, “No More Mean Tweets!”
The aphorism is meant as a mockery of Republicans who reduced the flaws of the former president down to his 240-character diatribes. But the adage carries the crucial grain of truth that said tweets served as not just as a cipher for Trump’s personal vendettas but also showed how much effort and time he spent in the Oval Office worrying about such things rather than governing.
Thus, it comes as a shock that Old Uncle Joe should employ the White House Twitter account to excoriate and ridicule Beltway business owners for pointing out that he has abused his power to give away as much as a trillion dollars.
Congressman Vern Buchanan had over $2.3 million in PPP loans forgiven.https://t.co/bXpwJlWRm4
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 25, 2022
Congressman Matt Gaetz had $482,321 in PPP loans forgiven.https://t.co/XPgC0pETkp
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 25, 2022
As you may recall, the PPP, or Paycheck Protection Program, was about 16% of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, which passed Congress by a nearly unanimous vote at the apex of the pandemic panic of March 2020. With lockdowns taking effect across the country, the White House and the Hill agreed on a bipartisan basis to authorize direct checks to individuals legally barred from working and nominal “loans” to businesses that the government fully intended to forgive on the condition that they keep paying employees.
At that time, the economy did not need stimulus, but businesses needed a lifeline because demand had been artificially asphyxiated by government diktat.
Subsequently, consumer spending and employment rebounded rapidly upon the relaxation of pandemic regulations, proving that the PPP had helped — not because consumers did not have money to spend but because government, at every level, had barred them from spending it.
President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness will have inflationary consequences. But setting those aside, it will cost at least one-third of a trillion dollars amid the worst inflation in 40 years.
So let’s contrast the White House’s comparison on the merits. Even with the stated stipulation that borrowers with incomes above $125,000 are exempt, Biden’s student loan forgiveness is wildly regressive, with two-thirds of the dollars paid by taxpayers reaped by the top three-fifths of earners. Although a National Bureau of Economic Research paper would later lament that the PPP in practice was disproportionately claimed by businesses to favor the top quintile of earners, the law itself mandated that companies securing loans through the PPP had to use a minimum of three-fifths of funds to cover wages, insurance, and other benefit costs for employees.
Furthermore, the entire CARES Act was, in effect, the collateral offered to companies and individuals in exchange for their compliance with once-in-a-generation disruption to the economy by government itself. PPP loans and the subsequent forgiveness of those loans were fair in a way the student loan forgiveness boondoggle is not. Everyone agreed on the rules in March 2020 through a vote by the people’s representatives in Congress. In contrast, nobody agreed on the rules of Biden’s handout.
Trump’s tweets were, indeed, often mean. But at their most dangerous, they were merely delusional. The White House’s PPP tweets, on the other hand, are deliberate in their dishonesty and their unique cruelty toward those business owners who struggled to keep employees afloat during the pandemic.
