The Nebraska Credit Union League joined with CUNA and the American Association of Credit Union Leagues in penning a letter in support of simplifying the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program’s loan forgiveness process by enacting the Paycheck Protection Program Small Business Forgiveness Act (S. 4117 and H.R. 777).
The letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House of Representatives Leader Kevin McCarthy states that, while credit unions have made thousands of PPP loans that have helped small business owners recover from the impact of the pandemic, lenders and borrowers are starting to wrestle with the requirements for loan forgiveness.
The proposed “commonsense legislation” would provide forgiveness for PPP loans of $150,000 or less if the borrower submits an attestation form to the lender and ensure that lenders will be held harmless from any enforcement action if the borrower’s attestation contains “falsehoods,” allowing financial institutions to remain focused on serving their communities, “rather than jumping through burdensome regulatory hurdles,” the letter states.
Calling the loan forgiveness process overly complicated for most businesses, the letter also states that the complexity of the forgiveness process is compounded for small businesses because they may require outside counsel to correctly navigate the application process.
“This is an expense many of the smallest businesses cannot afford during such a crucial time. Creating an overly complex forgiveness process would seem to be the antithesis to the spirit of a program designed to rapidly deploy resources to small business, especially when the expectation is that the funds appropriated to PPP were never expected to be repaid.”
The letter can be accessed on CUNA’s website.
