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Maine’s Workforce: American Rescue Plan Money Well Spent

By Katie Furtado
September 13, 2022
Maine has seen a decline in labor participation since 2000 – its population has remained stagnant for the last 15 years, wages are low overall, youths are increasingly dropping out of the workforce, and the pandemic led to lower levels of labor participation. While 2020-2021 pandemic population growth has led to a lot of optimism, current participation levels still needed to be addressed.

Better American Rescue Plan Spending Data Exists, But Treasury is Holding It Up

By Katie Furtado
July 15, 2022
The federal pandemic watchdog agency has unveiled its new website to disclose how states and localities are spending their flexible $350 billion share of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. But the website is recycled data that has been available elsewhere for months; the Treasury Department is inexplicably holding back much more-detailed records.

New White House Report Catalogs ARPA’s Strengths

By Katie Furtado
June 13, 2022
A recent report from the White House outlines how 32 programs in the emergency package spurred an equitable recovery from the pandemic. Notable successes highlighted in the 301-page report include a sharp decline in unemployment among people of color, the largest number of new jobs ever in a calendar year and lowering black and brown child poverty rates.

Lessons Learned from the Paycheck Protection Program: A Way Forward for an Equitable COVID Recovery

By Katie Furtado
May 25, 2022
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was established in the CARES Act of 2020 to provide emergency relief to small businesses struggling to retain employees at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The program was supposed to be an innovative emergency lending program that would not only help small businesses but also ensure public dollars went to the workers most in need of support, but it didn’t live up to its promise. Instead, it was exploited by major corporations like McDonalds and luxury hotels like the Chateau Marmont.

PPP Loan Forgiveness Disclosures Reveal Many Dubious Beneficiaries

By Katie Furtado
January 25, 2022
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), part of the original federal stimulus package, the CARES Act, was meant to keep workers on the job and small businesses alive during a time of financial uncertainty. But did it work? The answer to that may be unclear, but nearly all the loans - over 80% - have been forgiven anyway.

Federal Dollars, States’ Recoveries: How Poorly Most States are Disclosing CARES ACT Spending

By Katie Furtado
December 13, 2021
Most states are failing to provide a full and complete picture of how they have been spending billions of dollars in assistance provided by Congress to help their residents recover from the financial burdens caused by COVID-19 pandemic. Just six states do it well, while eight states and the District of Columbia fail to disclose any meaningful information online. These are among the findings from a Good Jobs First review of the online disclosure practices of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, as they have spent a combined $111.8 billion from the Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF).

Private Equity-Backed Companies Added to List of Unnecessary CARES Act Recipients

By Katie Furtado
September 17, 2021
A new report from three government watchdog groups reveals a stunning figure: companies controlled by private equity firms received approximately $5.3 billion in federal CARES Act funding. Sadly, PE portfolios are not the only beneficiaries with deep pockets that got money from a relief package that was supposed to help small, struggling businesses and keep workers on the job.

Big Bucks, Vague Rules: States Fail to Disclose their CARES Act Spending

By Katie Furtado
September 2, 2021

Samford University in Alabama.

As part of the $2.2 trillion pandemic relief CARES Act enacted in spring 2020, states received $150 billion in general assistance via the Coronavirus Relief Fund. Within limits tied to the pandemic, the Relief Fund is meant to be flexible, and allowing states, U.S. territories, and tribal governments to direct money where it is most needed.

In exchange for the money – no state got less than $1.25 billion – governments are required to document how they are spending it. Unfortunately, the rules governing that disclosure are very vague, and many states are failing to disclose their uses.

Private Detention Facility Operators, Prison Contractors Receive PPP Loans

By Mellissa Chang
June 4, 2021
A new analysis by Good Jobs First has identified 22 companies involved in detention operations and prison contracting that received loans totaling more than $47 million from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The companies include three that house ICE detainees, three prison transportation companies, 12 correctional health care providers, and four youth detention center operators.

Disparities in CARES Act Funding for Florida Schools

By Mellissa Chang
March 9, 2021
March, 9, 2021--Over 5,400 private schools across the country received loans from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). In total, these loans amount to an estimated $4.5 billion, or approximately $833,000 per school. Florida’s PPP loan data reveal similar trends. In Florida, more than 350 private schools received an estimated $236 million in PPP loans—approximately $675,000 per school.

However, PPP loans were not the only source of education funds for private schools; some were also eligible for federal grants through the CARES Act Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief

January 2021 PPP Loans Now Available on Covid Stimulus Watch

By Mellissa Chang
February 23, 2021

February 23, 2021--In early February, the SBA released data on more than 891,000 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans issued since the reopening of the program on January 11. Of this new tranche of loans, roughly 106,000 were of $150,000 or more, amounting to $45 billion in sum. Those new loans of $150,000 or more are now available on Covid Stimulus Watch.

Since December, the SBA has disclosed exact dollar amounts for all PPP loans in its data releases. The new batch of loans, as well as previous loans, are available on Covid Stimulus Watch with exact loan values, allowing for more

Austerity for Whom?

By Mellissa Chang
February 12, 2021
Last week, Republican Senators unveiled an alternative to President Biden’s stimulus proposal. While the viability of this Republican proposal continues to wane, emerging concerns about “unspent” funds and aid overkill are likely to endure in future stimulus discussion and are worth public consideration.

Updated PPP Loans Now Available on Covid Stimulus Watch

By Mellissa Chang
January 27, 2021
Updated data on Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans of $150,000 or more is now available on Covid Stimulus Watch. The 661,000 loans on Covid Stimulus Watch now have precise dollar amounts instead of the range that was originally reported by the SBA.

Disparities in CARES Act Funding for West Virginia Schools

By Mellissa Chang
January 6, 2021
Over 5,400 private schools across the country received loans from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), amounting to an estimated $4.5 billion—approximately $833,000 per school. West Virginia follows this trend with 18 private schools receiving an estimated $5.8 million in PPP loans, or $322,000 per school.
 
CARES Act funding for public education, however, was not as generous. West Virginia was allocated $78 million in grants for its 768 Title I public schools through the Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER). Although the ESSER program is primarily

Covid Contractors and the Fraudsters

By Phil Mattera
September 20, 2020
If you needed a plumber or a caterer, you would avoid a service provider who had in the past tried to bill you for work not performed or grossly overcharged for what was completed. The Trump Administration takes a different approach. In selecting contractors to provide the goods and services the federal government needs to deal with the pandemic, it has turned to dozens of corporations with a history of cheating Uncle Sam.

Who Is Hogging Covid Stimulus Funds?

By Phil Mattera
August 6, 2020
The main cause for the stalemate in Congress over a new round of covid stimulus funding is a belief by numerous Republicans that the federal government has been too generous to the unemployed. The enhanced jobless benefits created by the CARES Act need to be curtailed, they argue, to push people to return to work.

Big Business and the PPP

By Phil Mattera
July 30, 2020
By now it is clear that the recipients of Paycheck Protection Program loans were often companies larger than the mom-and-pop operations we were led to believe would be the main beneficiaries. A closer examination of the data shows assistance going not just to mid-sized companies but also to portions of Big Business.

Covid Stimulus Watch Adds $60 Billion in Economic Injury Disaster Loans

By Mellissa Chang
July 29, 2020

By Mellissa Chang

Covid Stimulus Watch now contains award information for almost 400,000 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) payments from the CARES Act, amounting to more than $60 billion in loans. To date, the Small Business Administration has approved approximately $164 billion in EIDL loans, roughly half of its $360 billion allocation, to almost 3 million business. Of these loans, 80% were less than $150,000 and the average loan amount was just over $62,000.

Due to the high volume of loans and the relatively small size of most loan amounts, the Covid Stimulus Watch database only

Foreign-Owned Regulatory Violators Found Among PPP Recipients

By Phil Mattera
July 23, 2020
The massive Paycheck Protection Program was depicted as a necessary measure to save American small businesses, yet the list of recipients of the forgivable loans released by the Treasury Department contains numerous companies that are neither small nor American.

Double-Dipping by PPP Healthcare Loan Recipients

By Phil Mattera
July 16, 2020
Healthcare providers have faced significant challenges during the pandemic, but it was still surprising to see that sector show up as the largest recipient of assistance under the Paycheck Protection Program. That’s because hospitals and other providers were already receiving tens of billions of dollars in federal aid from other CARES Act programs.

Covid Stimulus Watch Adds New PPP Data

By Phil Mattera
July 6, 2020
Covid Stimulus Watch has added the data released today by the Treasury Department on all Paycheck Protection Program loans of $150,000 or more. That brings the total number of awards listed on the site to more than 600,000—a twenty-fold increase.

New Federal Reserve Data Is Up on Covid Stimulus Watch

By Phil Mattera
June 29, 2020
The Fortune 500 is now well represented on the list of CARES Act recipients. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve posted its first batch of information on corporate bond purchases under the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility. We have added the information to Covid Stimulus Watch.

Covid Stimulus Watch Posts Updated HHS Data on Aid to Hospitals

By Phil Mattera
June 12, 2020

by Phil Mattera

The Department of Health and Human Services keeps updating the list of hospitals and other medical facilities receiving aid through the Provider Relief Fund. At Covid Stimulus Watch we scramble to capture the latest data and link the facilities listed by HHS to their health system parent entities.

HHS posted two updates to the list this week, and we have just finished adding our parent links to the data, which is now live on our site. We now include more than 11,000 grants of $500,000 or more from the program. These have a total value of $45 billion. For more info, see

What’s New in Covid Stimulus Watch

By Phil Mattera
May 23, 2020
We’ve been spending a lot of time on the Provider Relief Fund awards data released by the Department of Health and Human Services. Focusing on those awards worth $500,000 or more, we have matched the individual hospitals listed in the data to their parent health systems, most of which are non-profits.

Rescuing the Cheaters

By Phil Mattera
May 14, 2020
The federal government has been sending tens of billions of dollars in aid to the country’s hospitals under the Provider Relief Fund created by the CARES Act. That’s all well and good. Yet there is an awkward aspect to this: quite a few of the recipients have been accused of cheating the federal government in the past.

More Provider Relief Fund Data Added

By Phil Mattera
May 14, 2020
An update for those of you interested in the Provider Relief Fund data: HHS posted a revised version of the recipient list with 17,000 more entries. It also posted a separate list of "high-impact" awards to hospitals which have treated 100 or more covid patients. We have uploaded the full high-impact list and the other new awards above $500,000 to Covid Stimulus Watch, adding the names of the health systems to which the individual facilities belong. 
 

Covid Stimulus Watch Adds 5,000 Healthcare Provider Awards

By Phil Mattera
May 11, 2020
Covid Stimulus Watch has just grown tenfold with the addition of 5,000 entries involving healthcare providers. The new entries are an enhanced version of a recipient list posted late last week by the Department of Health and Human Services for the Provider Relief Fund created by the CARES Act.

Should Taxpayers Aid Corporate Bad Actors?

By Phil Mattera
May 7, 2020

The uproar over the participation of larger companies in the Paycheck Protection Program is a sign that the country will increasingly confront a broader issue about the massive Covid-19 relief effort: does every company deserve assistance during a crisis that affects all parts of the economy?

Data Tip No. 2

By Phil Mattera
May 6, 2020

Data tip No.2 from Covid Stimulus Watch: it turns out for-profit colleges are getting covid aid under the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund. We've added entries for the likes of DeVry and the Univ. of Phoenix.

Data Tip No. 1

By Phil Mattera
May 5, 2020

Data tip from Covid Stimulus Watch: we now have some entries for stimulus awards to for-profit healthcare providers. For example, over $1 billion to Community Health Systems Inc.