Sen. Susan Collins made changes to the rules governing the Paycheck Protection Program to allow large, corporate chains to benefit from the fund meant to provide a lifeline to small businesses grappling with the economic impact of coronavirus.
During an appearance on WSKW’s conservative morning talk show, host Mike Violette read a message from a hotel chain thanking the senator for rewording the regulations to allow hotel and restaurant chains with fewer than 500 employees “per physical location” to be defined as a small business.
Collins responded saying she “did work very hard […] and I was able to get an exception included into the bill.”
Following the interview, Daily Beast political contributor Eleanor Clift dug into how those “three little words” directly benefited a number of Collins’ major funders.
“An examination of contributions to Collins for Senator, and to her leadership PAC, during the first quarter of 2020 reveals $13,000 in contributions in mid-to-late February from the American Hotel and Lodging Association PAC, the Hilton Worldwide PAC, and the International Franchise Association,” Clift reported.
Beth Rotman, an expert in money and politics at the national pro-democracy group Common Cause, told Clift, “Essentially a combination of wealthy special interests together with well-placed contributors at a critical moment bought a revision to our stimulus package that defined small business as including big business because they owned large franchises made up of hundreds of smaller entities. They were following the law they helped write.”
State and federal officials have called for changes in the PPP after those loopholes allowed large companies to drain the initial allotment of $369 billion in a matter of weeks. Another round of COVID-19 relief passed by the U.S. Senate on April 21 included an additional $310 billion for the fund but did not alter those provisions. On May 3, the Small Business Administration announced that of the $310 billion, roughly half had been allocated, with 16 percent of that funding going to businesses who applied for loans of more than $2 million, indicating that large businesses were still receiving a significant portion of the funds.
“Susan Collins went out of her way to turn a program to support small businesses into a cash cow for big corporations,” said Maine Democratic Party chair Kathleen Marra in a statement following the radio interview. “It’s clear that even when Maine small businesses are struggling, Collins will put the corporate special interests backing her campaign first.”
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