The Biden administration forgave $88 million in government loans to Planned Parenthood, but Kelly Loeffler, current administrator of the Small Business Administration, says she is working to ensure this does not happen again.
In January, Loeffler opened a review into whether Planned Parenthood affiliates illegally received funds through the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided loans to small businesses to maintain payroll and cover other costs during the COVID-19 pandemic. She told The Daily Signal Wednesday that the process of scrutinizing the funding is ongoing.
“The Biden administration said they wanted to blow through the affiliation laws that prevented Planned Parenthood from getting that money and allow them to have those loans and forgave those loans,” she said, “and so our agency has really ensured that we look at where we can make sure that doesn’t happen again, and that we cooperate in any of the investigations.”
Planned Parenthood affiliates have been informed that they received the money unlawfully, she said.
The administration has “strict” rules for lending, Loeffler said, “and it’s clear that affiliation rules would have prohibited Planned Parenthood from getting those funds, and so that’s already not possible for Planned Parenthood under the application of the law to get those funds.”
Loeffler said the review is still in process. The administration sent letters to 88 Planned Parenthood affiliates asking them to prove they were eligible for the COVID-19-era relief, which totaled more than $88 million.
“We published the letters,” she said, “and we did let people know that we had contacted them, let them know that they did get the money unlawfully.”
Loeffler said the Planned Parenthood loans show the need for Vice President JD Vance’s task force on fighting taxpayer fraud.
“We should make sure that these funds are never even dispersed because they’re harder to claw back than they are to stop at the front end,” she said, “and I know the Vice President is very focused on how we cut that off.”
Loeffler has been tracking the issue since she was in the Senate, she said. In 2020, Loeffler penned a letter to the Department of Treasury asking them to investigate Planned Parenthood’s “abuse of the taxpayer-funded Paycheck Protection Program.”
