These are unques­tion­ably tough times to be a small busi­ness own­er, or to work for a small busi­ness. Small busi­ness­es are the back­bone of the Amer­i­can econ­o­my, but many are cur­rent­ly hiber­nat­ing as a con­se­quence of the many “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” orders in place across the country.

Many of these busi­ness­es are thus trapped.

They can’t bring rev­enue in the door, but they still have bills to pay.

Con­gress sought to help small busi­ness­es with the CARES (Coro­n­avirus Aid, Relief, and Eco­nom­ic Secu­ri­ty) Act last month. The CARES Act autho­rized $300 bil­lion in eco­nom­ic relief for small busi­ness­es affect­ed by the nov­el coronavirus.

Sad­ly, that mon­ey has not reached small busi­ness­es due to the incom­pe­tence of Don­ald Trump’s regime. Our friend Dar­cy Burn­er, her­self a small busi­ness own­er, explained what’s going in a recent pub­lic Face­book post.

So for any of you who are inter­est­ed in the cur­rent sta­tus of help for small busi­ness­es in the COVID-19 world:

Most small busi­ness­es in the US have been ordered by author­i­ties to shut down as part of the stay home orders, and there­fore can’t legal­ly oper­ate to do what­ev­er it is they do. Most have cash on hand to cov­er only a cou­ple of weeks of expens­es with­out rev­enue. We are more than a cou­ple of weeks into the shutdown.

Bills for rent, equip­ment leas­es, etc are still due and still need to be paid.

If the busi­ness has been pay­ing for busi­ness inter­rup­tion insur­ance — a pol­i­cy explic­it­ly to pro­tect a busi­ness in case of a dis­as­ter or order from the gov­ern­ment to shut down — they have already been told by their insur­er that they won’t get any payment.

The insur­ers are uni­ver­sal­ly tak­ing the stance that an epi­dem­ic means the loss isn’t cov­ered, even if the pol­i­cy says it cov­ers the busi­ness when civ­il author­i­ties order a shut­down. (Of course, actu­al­ly pay­ing all of those busi­ness inter­rup­tion poli­cies would quick­ly bank­rupt the insur­ers, since every­one is shut down indefinitely.)

It appears that approx­i­mate­ly zero of the Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram Loans have result­ed in a small busi­ness actu­al­ly receiv­ing any mon­ey. News sources talk­ing to banks say that the prob­lem is that the SBA has still not giv­en the banks a promis­so­ry note to use for these. So those sto­ries claim­ing that bil­lions have been dis­bursed? None of that is actu­al­ly in the hands of any small busi­ness. And most small busi­ness­es are get­ting dead silence after they apply. Just… nothing.

Like­wise, busi­ness­es that have applied for SBA Eco­nom­ic Injury Dis­as­ter Loans are over­whelm­ing­ly being met with silence and zero move­ment of funds. There is no way to check status.

If you call & wait on hold for 1–2 hours, the nice per­son at the oth­er end of the call will tell you they have no way to check and that even­tu­al­ly you’ll hope­ful­ly be con­tact­ed by a loan officer.

Most small busi­ness own­ers have to per­son­al­ly guar­an­tee every­thing when start­ing a busi­ness. If the busi­ness fails, they lose not just the busi­ness, but also their house, any sav­ings, future earn­ings, etc.

I get that com­plain­ing that the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion is cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly incom­pe­tent is passe. But in case you were won­der­ing: the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion is being cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly incom­pe­tent in this too.

Dar­cy Burn­er is the CEO of But­ton­smith, a social­ly respon­si­ble, envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, union­ized print shop in Car­na­tion, Wash­ing­ton that began as a fourth grade class project. (Dar­cy’s son Hen­ry is the founder of But­ton­smith; the busi­ness was orig­i­nal­ly known as Hen­ry the Buttonsmith.)

But­ton­smith is a trust­ed print­ing part­ner for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, han­dling what we can­not print in-house, like ban­ners and signs.

Although But­ton­smith is cur­rent­ly closed due to COVID-19 and not like­ly to reopen for weeks, you can sup­port the com­pa­ny right now by buy­ing a gift card for friends or fam­i­ly to use when the com­pa­ny is able to resume nor­mal oper­a­tions. Gift cards are avail­able in incre­ments of up to one hun­dred dol­lars.

CBS News cor­rob­o­rat­ed what Dar­cy Burn­er wrote about on Face­book in a report pub­lished ear­li­er this week (Bil­lions “dis­bursed” through Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram? Small busi­ness­es say not yet):

Bri­ana and Andrew Volk, own­ers of Port­land Hunt and Alpine Club in Port­land, Maine, said they were approved for a PPP loan on Sun­day, accord­ing to a notice from their banker.

Three days lat­er, though, they are still wait­ing for the funds.

Bri­ana Volk said their bank has not pro­vid­ed any final paper­work to close the loan for their bar and restau­rant — nor is it clear when they will get it. A clos­ing date has not been scheduled.

In the mean­time, they don’t know what to tell their work­ers, some of whom have already been laid off.

“If we take on the PPP loan and take our staff back on, we may very well be pay­ing them less than what they’d get through sup­ple­men­tal unem­ploy­ment insur­ance that the CARES Act car­ries,” Volk said, refer­ring to the broad­er $2 tril­lion fed­er­al stim­u­lus law that includes the small busi­ness res­cue program.

As Dar­cy said, and as CBS News report­ed, a big hangup is that the Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion has­n’t giv­en banks the green light to actu­al­ly make loans yet under the Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram. Here’s CBS again:

First Bank, a com­mu­ni­ty and small busi­ness lender in Hamil­ton, New Jer­sey, said it start­ed tak­ing appli­ca­tions for PPP loans and sub­mit­ting bor­row­er infor­ma­tion to the SBA on Friday.

So far, fifty loans have been approved.

But First Bank CEO Patrick Ryan said the com­pa­ny has yet to make a sin­gle loan under the program.

He attrib­uted the hold-up to the SBA hav­ing yet to issue a legal doc­u­ment, known as a promis­so­ry note, required to close the loan.

With­out a signed promis­so­ry note, Ryan said it was­n’t clear the SBA would guar­an­tee the loans and that banks could end up on the hook if bor­row­ers aren’t able to pay them back.

On top of that, the SBA could force the bank to redo the loan, putting the bank’s small busi­ness bor­row­er to the back of what has become a very crowd­ed line for the loans.

Ryan said he expects the SBA to issue the final paper­work by the end of the week. After that, it would prob­a­bly take anoth­er few days before he could begin mak­ing loans.

“Some banks may have gone ahead and made loans, but I would be reluc­tant to do that,” he said. “The SBA has rules. Had we moved for­ward, the loans might have not qual­i­fied. It’s not some­thing I would recommend.”

Small busi­ness­es need cash bad­ly… now… but they can’t tap the help Con­gress vot­ed to give them because the Trump regime is incompetent.

The SBA’s inabil­i­ty to pro­vide time­ly assis­tance to small busi­ness own­ers is part of a larg­er pat­tern of incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion we have seen the last few weeks.

From an arti­cle last month by The New York Times:

Despite promis­es of a “whole of gov­ern­ment” effort, key agen­cies — like the Army Corps of Engi­neers, oth­er parts of the Defense Depart­ment, the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency and the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs — had not been asked to play much of a role.

Even after Mr. Trump com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the states on Tues­day, the Army Corps of Engi­neers said it still had not received direc­tion from the administration.

It’s bad enough that we have a pan­dem­ic on our hands. Not being able to rely on our own fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is mak­ing an awful sit­u­a­tion much worse.