We’d all collectively like to forget the pandemic that ruined our lives for those murky years. Many businesses were shut down as a result, though it would have been undoubtedly worse had it not been for the Paycheck Protection Program Loans, or PPP for short. This 800 billion dollar injection into the economy allowed businesses to continue to have money for payroll, which kept many of them afloat. However, a total lack of oversight, and the need for expediency meant that a huge amount of fraud occurred. The true scope is unknown, though there are estimates:

The SBA’s inspector general has identified $78.1 billion in potentially fraudulent Economic Injury Disaster Loans, another Covid relief program for businesses. The Secret Service has its own estimate: $100 billion.

This basically implies over 12% of all the money loaned was done so fraudulently. Some have referred to the program as the biggest fraud in a generation (this would be true were it not for the Panama Papers, which dwarfs this little scheme). Billions of dollars worth of loans have since been forgiven, so long as businesses were able to prove that the money had been used for legitimate business expenses.

Do you know who didn’t have to prove any of this? Churches. Among the organizations that received loans were both urban and rural churches, large and small. While it’s true that some did pay them back, it’s estimated that over 8 billion dollars worth of loans have been forgiven so far.

Let me remind you that not one of these organizations has ever paid the taxes that funded these loans in the first place. Ignoring the fact that their free ride actually ends up costing us money; now Americans are literally paying for religions institutions that would have otherwise thankfully closed.