SBA Demands Planned Parenthood Return $80 Million in Stimulus Funds
Any organization founded on death cannot be trusted to play by the rules.
To help small businesses survive and pay their employees during the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government and the Small Business Association rolled out the Paycheck Protection Program with clear guidelines for application and approval.
In order to receive stimulus funds, the small business could not employ more than 500 people. That’s one of the guidelines.
Planned Parenthood applied anyway, knowing full well it did not meet the qualifications.
It’s safe to say that the nation’s largest abortion provider exceeds the maximum number of employees by a wide margin. It is a conglomerate business.
The Trump administration told the Daily Caller News Foundation in late April that Planned Parenthood would not receive a dime of the money set aside to help the small businesses.
President Donald Trump is a champion of the pro-life cause, and his record is clear when it comes to protecting the unborn, the weak and the vulnerable.
Trump was the first president to address the National March for Life in person this past January, declaring, “We’re here for a very simple reason: to defend the right of every child, born and unborn, to fulfill their God-given potential.”
He also appointed Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, two pro-life judges, to the Supreme Court.
Somehow, however, Planned Parenthood finagled the PPP process and was awarded tens of millions of dollars in relief loans, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson reported Tuesday.
Its clinics were deemed essential during the coronavirus crisis and, for the most part, have been permitted to keep their doors open for abortions while elective surgeries were put on hold. So those awaiting the repair of a rotator cuff or even the removal of a tumor were forced to wait out the lockdown, but the senseless and cruel slaughter of unborn babies has been allowed to continue.
Carlson said the abortion provider raked in $1.6 billion in revenue in 2019 on top of the millions of dollars of taxpayer funding it receives annually. It is also one of the biggest lobbyists for Democratic candidates, he noted.
The millions that clinics received could go to help legitimate small businesses pay their employees instead of funding a well-oiled killing machine.
In all, thirty-seven Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country were awarded $80 million in loans — but now they might be forced to give it back.
According to Carson, the SBA has asked the affiliates to return the money, saying they should have known they weren’t eligible for the relief funds.
“The SBA warned more ‘severe penalties’ were possible, beyond mandatory repayment,” the Fox News report said.
“In particular, incorrect or false eligibility certifications by PPP recipients could result in criminal or civil sanctions if the SBA determined borrowers made knowingly false statements, the SBA letter read.”
To pile on, 27 Republican senators, led by Tom Cotton of Arkansas, signed a letter Thursday urging Attorney General William Barr to look into the process to see if there were any certification issues during the application process.
The senators told Barr that “it seems clear that Planned Parenthood knew that it was ineligible for the small business loans under the CARES Act long before its affiliates fraudulently self-certified that they were eligible. As you know, fraudulent loan applications can trigger both civil and criminal penalties.”
Two other GOP senators, Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri, also called for an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s acquisition of the loans.
Rubio said it was a “clear” violation of PPP rules.
“There is no ambiguity in the legislation that passed or public record around its passage that organizations such as Planned Parenthood, whose parent organization has close to half a billion dollars in assets, is not eligible for the Paycheck Protection Program,” the senator said in a statement Tuesday. “Those funds must be returned immediately. Furthermore, the SBA should open an investigation into how these loans were made in clear violation of the applicable affiliation rules and if Planned Parenthood, the banks, or staff at the SBA knowingly violated the law, all appropriate legal options should be pursued.”
Hawley echoed that view, saying in a tweet Tuesday, “The money needs to be recovered and if anybody knowingly falsified applications, they need to be prosecuted.”
The money needs to be recovered and if anybody knowingly falsified applications, they need to be prosecuted
https://t.co/FKnrkHnE2P #FoxNews— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) May 20, 2020
Planned Parenthood, however, claimed the senators were just playing politics.
“This is a clear political attack on Planned Parenthood health centers and access to reproductive health care,” Jacqueline Ayers, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s vice president of government relations and public policy, said, according to CBS News. “It has nothing to do with Planned Parenthood health care organizations’ eligibility for COVID-19 relief efforts, and everything to do with the Trump administration using a public health crisis to advance a political agenda.”
Stephanie Fraim, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, told CBS News that she won’t be giving back the money.
“It’s an attack on our patients and continually trying to shame our patients … at a time when really we should be united to care for our community,” she said.
But Fraim and the other affiliates’ leaders should be forced to return the funds, and if they provided false or misleading information on their applications, they should be prosecuted.
It should come as no surprise that an organization responsible for killing untold thousands of unborn babies might have lied on its application or manipulated the process.
Planned Parenthood is a morally corrupt business that takes life away from innocent babies, and now it also takes money away from hardworking small business owners whose livelihoods might be on life support.
It is an organization that perpetuates deception and preys on the emotions of scared and uninformed expectant mothers, and now it is yanking away the financial lifeline from entrepreneurs.
The bigger question is how it received the money in the first place.
Did those who reviewed the applications take the time to carefully evaluate them, or did they just rubber stamp them to get them through the system?
If the latter is the case, Planned Parenthood might have rolled the dice and hit the jackpot.
The intent of the money was to help small business owners to stay open and keep the American dream alive. It was not intended to finance an assembly line of death.
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