Fraudsters robbed America's Main Street. Republicans are making them pay

As the White House's Fraud Ledger shows, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has uncovered more fraud than any other agency. Through Vice President JD Vance's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, the Trump administration is eliminating waste, fraud and abuse at historic rates.

When COVID shut down the country, small business owners did everything they could to keep their doors open. They drained their savings, skipped paychecks, and fought to keep employees on the payroll.

While small businesses were fighting to survive, fraudsters stole billions from programs meant to keep them afloat. The Biden-Harris administration had years to hold fraudsters accountable. It never did. Under Republican leadership, that era is over.

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Last month, SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler stood with Vice President Vance in Kansas City, Missouri, and announced the suspension of 870,000 borrowers linked to an estimated $39 billion in suspected pandemic fraud, the largest action of its kind in the agency's history.

As chairman of the House Committee on Small Business, I've worked closely with Administrator Loeffler to go after this money and ensure Main Street isn't left high and dry. Every dollar a fraudster took was a dollar a family business didn't get.

The Biden-Harris SBA knew COVID fraud was rampant and still failed to act. In 2023, the SBA’s Office of Inspector General estimated that more than $200 billion in pandemic loans may have gone to fraudsters. Agency leadership at the time stated the actual number was closer to $36 billion.

When our committee asked then-SBA Administrator Isabella Guzman to explain the $164 billion difference, she refused to testify. So we kept digging.

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Our committee spent 18 months investigating the pandemic loan programs. What we found was deeply disturbing. Rather than fixing its own broken controls, Biden's SBA pointed fingers at the private lenders it worked with. It even floated ending collections on fraudulent loans under $100,000, valued at about $11 billion, because it didn't want to appear to be strong-arming borrowers.

Unfortunately, pandemic loans aren't the whole story.

Just look at the 8(a) program, which helps disadvantaged small businesses compete for federal contracts. It only works if those firms do the work themselves. Pass-through schemes, in which the winning firm hands the job off to someone else, cheat the very businesses the program was meant to help.

In an effort to rein in fraudulent spending, Administrator Loeffler did something nobody had done in nearly 50 years: she audited the entire program. When hundreds of firms refused to hand over their financial records, she moved to kick them out. The SBA has also closed loopholes that let loans be issued in the names of children and the deceased, some of whom are listed as being older than 115.

House Republicans have helped lead this recovery from the start, and are ensuring these reforms stick. In June, the House passed my COVID Fraud Transparency Act, which requires the SBA's inspector general to report quarterly to Congress on COVID loan fraud. My committee also advanced pragmatic anti-fraud bills, including Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Dan Meuser's Small Business Lending Fraud Prevention Act and my bipartisan Put America on Commission Act.

I've spent my career in the car business, and I know that paying commissions delivers results. My bill, the Put America on Commission Act, would reward Americans who come forward with credible tips about pandemic loan fraud, funded by penalties paid by convicted fraudsters.

When I became chairman, I said we would not write this money off. Democrats spent four years ignoring this fraud and were ready to forgive billions of dollars. House Republicans, alongside Administrator Loeffler and Vice President Vance, will continue pursuing it so that the next time mom-and-pop shops need help, they won't have to stand in line behind fraudsters.