The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has become one of the most heavily scrutinized components of the CARES Act. “Because that’s what always happens.” Small, minority-owned businesses struggled to access the Paycheck Protection Program “All of this is going to tilt towards the biggest and most established companies and the smaller businesses and regular people are going to get left behind,” says Barofsky. This package, devised and promoted as a mechanism to alleviate inequitable suffering during the pandemic, may end up playing a role in exacerbating it in the immediate future. While few dispute that an ambitious federal bailout package was necessary to help the country confront dueling economic and public health crises, it’s clear now that Congress’s massive outlay of cash has been often inefficient, helping to exacerbate the already-yawning wealth gap in the United States while leaving the neediest in the lurch during the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression. “The safeguards in place are certainly not foolproof,” says Philip Mattera, Research Director at Good Jobs First, a non-profit organization tracking the recipients of the CARES Act. While lawmakers included language in the law that explicitly directed funds to those most in need, they often designed programs that were not set up to carry out those intentions. TIME’s analysis of just three pots of money allocated in the CARES Act-the programs buttressing small businesses, healthcare organizations, and institutions of higher education-indicates that the inequitable distribution was of a myriad legislative and regulatory design flaws.
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