Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is leading the charge to hold the Small Business Administration accountable for sending funds to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America using Paycheck Protection Program loans. This is the latest valiant attempt by Paul and the minority members of the Senate Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee to prevent the SBA from inexplicably providing funds to affiliates of the abortion giant throughout the country.
“The Small Business Administration has been illegally giving taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood entities across America,” Sen. Rand Paul told me. “Today, I led the minority members of the Small Business Committee in standing united in opposition to allowing a vote on the SBA’s nominee for Deputy Administrator until the SBA Administration takes action to recover the wrongfully acquired funds.”
The SBA determined that Planned Parenthood was ineligible for PPP loans totaling about $80 million under the applicable affiliation rules and size standards in May 2020. As such, the SBA asked that these loans be returned, but they never were. In April, Paul and the Small Business Committee’s Republican members wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, SBA Inspector General Mike Ware, and SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman asking for their assistance and an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s use of the PPP funds.
During the Spring, the SBA revealed that not only were most of the requests to return the funds ignored, but Planned Parenthood branches applied for and were approved for more loans even though they previously received notice that they were ineligible. The senator’s statement reads:
In what could only be described as an effort to deflect from the Planned Parenthood controversy, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey accused Republicans of “playing politics.”
“Senate Republicans continue to play politics with the recovery of our nation’s small businesses and are refusing to show up and do their jobs. I urge my colleagues to put the recovery over politics and vote on @Dilawar Syed’s nomination to the Small Business Administration.”
Ironically, while Markey accused Republicans of playing politics and not showing up, it was Markey who failed to show up to the vote. Democrats who were so concerned with the nomination did not have a quorum.
This is the latest controversy involving Planned Parenthood. The facts suggest that Planned Parenthood knowingly and willfully took taxpayer money to which it did not have a right. Bureaucratic malfeasance is common in our country, but there seems to be purposeful wrongdoing in this situation. If an organization like Planned Parenthood is able to skirt the rules during a time when all of the country is suffering vast economic setbacks, it demonstrates that organizations that align politically with Democrats in power are simply above the law.
Planned Parenthood owes taxpayers about $100 million. Democrats can’t change that by name-calling and failing to show up for their own votes.
