Florida Democrats return PPP money amid scandal – By Marc Caputo and Matt Dixon (Politico) / July 9 2020
The Florida Democratic Party announced late Wednesday that it was returning at least $780,000 in small-business loans after its own lawmakers criticized the acceptance of the money as highly questionable if not illegal and unethical.
© AP Photo/John Raoux Terrie Rizzo, chair of the Florida Democratic Party.
The party immediately applied for the loan after Congress first passed the $670 billion Paycheck Protection Program, known as PPP, even though there was discussion at the time that the money should go to neither lobbyists nor political causes.
In May, the chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, Terrie Rizzo, blasted PPP as a “disaster” that “funneled” money to large corporations. She failed to disclose that her own party had applied for a loan of $350,000 to $1 million — an arrangement that came to light this week after all recipients were disclosed, prompting a round of national hand-wringing over a system that left too many small businesses with empty hats in hand.
As Republicans lobbed bombs at the party, Florida Democratic lawmakers were outraged as well, stung by the decision and their own potential political exposure. The party is currently underwriting the salaries of campaign staff throughout Florida, including those working to elect Joe Biden, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, in the nation’s biggest battleground state.
In a stern conversation on Wednesday with Rizzo, Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.) demanded that the party return the money and told the chairwoman she wouldn’t participate in a Friday news conference to push back on President Donald Trump’s proposed visit to her hometown of Miami, two sources familiar with the conversation told POLITICO.
Two Democratic state senators, Jason Pizzo and Annette Taddeo, took to Twitter to assail the party’s decision, along with state Rep. Anna Eskamani. Pizzo said he alerted Biden’s daughter Ashley Biden to the problem.
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