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Comment by elashri | Hacker News Reader

$755B was forgiven. I know that there are many benefits for this program but I cannot resist comparing this with the NSF budget. This is equal to about 75.5 years of the current NSF budget (assuming constant budget but unlikely as there is planned deep cuts). If we assume that the budget will increase 5% to adjust for inflation (unlikely too) then that would about 32yrs. Not that I'm comparing in absolute usefulness. I just don't understand why this particular item in the budget making all this noise while comparing to the vast majority of programs is peanuts.

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It's been discussed before but I'll go ahead and say it again. Any administration that was actually serious about cutting spending to benefit the American people would start with cutting unnecessary defense projects and large scale healthcare reform. Those categories take up the vast, vast majority of the budget. But instead, they cut the programs projecting benevolence to the world and protecting us from tuberculosis outbreaks because they were "full of marxists" and then proceeded to outline a horrifying plan for expansion that would certainly increase defense costs. There isn't actual logic here, it's based on subjective feelings and lies designed to appease voters and enrage them at the other side. God forbid there ever be any deep thought or nuance to anything.

Often when people speak of healthcare reform, it’s spending more from the budget.

But otherwise yes, Defense, Medicare, and Social Security are the largest expenditures.

One causes "the base" to dig in even deeper in their support. The other makes people happen under subsequent administrations. Americans' addictions to cheap sugar doesn't end at literal donuts.

> $755B was forgiven

I have almost $50k in that number. (1099 income.) It was a waste.

A friend was a senior staffer negotiating that bill. We were together, in 2020, when these bills were drafted and passed. My friend aimed to exempt people like me from forgiveness. I, of course, didn't mind the free money, but know that for my $50k there are the e.g. Ciprianis borrowing millions only to transfer it, immediately, to their personal accounts. Even selfishly, I was a net payer.

They never managed to exempt me. So I applied for the loans, got them, never paid a dime, applied for forgiveness, got it and then walked away. (I didn't fire myself, nor even cut my hours!) Granted, these sums are peanuts compared with the bonanza I'm about to reap with Trump's TCJA mark 2. But at least that's plainly a giveaway to the wealthy.

Trump made sure that there was no mechanism to track any illegal activity related PPP grant program.

This is all less-than-peanuts when compared to Trump's tax plan released today: $5-$11 trillion over ten years.

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/trump-tax-priorities-total-5-11-t...

Why was it forgiven?

Don’t know about the OPs case, but forgiveness was based on meeting the requirements of the program: 60% of the loan to employees and 40% to approved employer expenses (business overhead such as rent and electricity).

I assisted with the submission of PPP forgiveness for 4 restaurants.

When the program was launched, there were ways of exempting from repayment, like not doing lay offs.

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