\n\n“The federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, which effectively paid businesses to keep workers on their payroll even if they temporarily closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, was a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After quickly burning through its initial allocation of $349 billion, the Paycheck Protection Program was reauthorized a few times and ended up costing more than $820 billion<\/a>, making it one of the largest components of the federal government’s humongous COVID relief effort. Despite being lauded by both Democrats and Republicans, independent analysis found that the program was a hugely expensive failure<\/a>. Only about one-third of the program’s money actually went to workers who would have otherwise lost their jobs, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study<\/a>. Another study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that taxpayers paid roughly $4 for every $1 of wages and benefits<\/a> to workers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n