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The wasteful spending by our government is no big secret as it has unfortunately been going on forever, but I just came across some information that brought our government wasteful spending practices to rock bottom.  During Covid the government came up with a not very well thought out idea with what it called the “Paycheck Protection Program” (PPP) which in principle, sounded good, but in practice, was a blatant abuse of the taxpayers’ money to the extent that it enriched the bank accounts of multimillion dollar law firms.  The government actually used the taxpayers’ hard earned money to make the already rich lawyers even richer by giving the rich lawyers a very underserved windfall for doing absolutely nothing but filling out a form.

A mind boggling 200,503 businesses in the so called “Offices of Lawyers” industry received a total of $16.4 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money through this money squandering program.  The criteria for the law firms to receive this money was very minimal almost to the point that it was a joke.  The PPP was a loan designed to provide a direct incentive for “small businesses” to keep their workers on payroll and the first draw of the so called “loans” could be used to help fund payroll costs and could also be used to pay for mortgage interest, rent and utilities. This all sounded well and good when this bill was being sold to the public, but what the public wasn’t told was that this program was going to funnel $16.4 billion dollars into the bank accounts of rich multimillion dollar law firms who obviously didn’t need the money.  Many high profile law firms around the country received as much as $10 million dollars per law firm and numerous law firms received several hundreds of thousands of dollars each.  The law firms who received this money are shown here https://www.federalpay.org/paycheck-protection-program/industries/offices-of-lawyers.  The operative buzz word that the government utilized to sell this sound good program was purported to be to help “small businesses” which most people are in favor of, but I would venture to say that law firms that rake in millions of dollars in profits by in large part fleecing people by charging everyday working people several hundred dollars per hour to represent them hardly meets the spirit of the definition of “small businesses”.

The Paycheck Protection Program loans were very generous as the so called “loans” could be forgiven if at least 60% of the money was used on payroll —many of the employees’ salaries were $60,000-$100,000.  While it is great that the employees are able to earn such impressive salaries, a law firm that can afford to pay such high salaries should hardly have its hand out for donations from the taxpayers to help subsidize the employees’ healthy salaries given out by those law firms.  And, as usual, the government is playing games with not being very upfront with the public as the so called “loans” were reported by the Small Business Association SBA as “Paid in Full” which includes both loans repaid and those “fully forgiven” from repayment under PPP guidelines.  If the so called “loan” was “fully forgiven”, common sense tells us that that the loan wasn’t repaid.  How in the world can the government say with a straight face that the so called “loan” was “Paid in Full” when in fact it wasn’t?  After such deceit upon the public, the rub now is that after the government gave away $16.4 billion dollars of the taxpayers’ money to rich law firms, the government prefers that the public doesn’t know which law firms didn’t repay the so called “loans” of which so called “loans” were “fully forgiven” —these law firms laughed all the way to the bank.  It would indeed be very interesting to know if any of the law firms that received $10 million dollars per law firm and the law firms that received several hundred thousands of dollars actually repaid the money back or if the so called “loans” were “fully forgiven”?  Why the secrecy?  Could it be because the government doesn’t want the people to know that it gave $10 million dollars to several rich law firms and several hundred thousands of dollars  to many rich law firms under the guise of a “loan”, but that in all reality it wasn’t really a “loan” but a windfall given to those rich law firms gratis of the taxpayers?  It was absolutely asinine for the government to give away $16.4 billion dollars of the taxpayers’ money to rich law firms under the guise of a “loan”.  The last people who should be receiving handouts to the tune of $16.4 billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money for doing nothing but filling out a form are rich law firms.  This was a terrible heist of taxpayers’ money in order to enrich the bank accounts of already rich law firms.  Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, our government steals from the poor and gives to the rich, and that is exactly what happened here, make no mistake about it. 

This was a shameful abuse of the taxpayers’ money to the highest extent.  Think about it, when the ordinary people of our country seek some relief because of their dire financial situations such as applying for food stamps or rent assistance and things like that, or for pauper status in court so filing fee costs can be waived, the government requires the ordinary people, who actually are financially strapped, to disclose their assets by filling out affidavits and answering questions, but when it comes to wealthy millionaire lawyers and their multimillion dollar law firms, the government doesn’t make them disclose their assets, the government simply gives thousands of wealthy law firms $16.4 billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money for doing nothing but filling out a form without requiring a disclosure of their assets to determine if they actually needed the help.  Something is very wrong with that picture.  So in essence, the government handed out $16.4 billion dollars and in several cases $10 million dollars to numerous multimillion law firms gratis of the taxpayers.  The government should be ashamed, but it doesn’t because it has no shame.

In my opinion government is out of line in taking our tax dollars and handing it over to already rich law firms.  If lawyers and their law firms feel the need to charge the ordinary people of our country ridiculously high fees to the tune of several hundred dollars an hour so the lawyers and the law firms can be rich, then they should pay for their own expenses and not expect to be subsidized by the taxpayers —and that is clearly what happened here to the tune of $16.4 billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.  What a scam!

So the next time when tax time comes back around and you are writing your check to the government, think about how the government takes your tax money out of your pocket and puts your tax money into the bank accounts of rich law firms all over the country.  It must make Uncle Sam feel really good to know that he is able to extract our hard earned money from us and give it to rich lawyers so they can buy $500 cuff links and $1,000 suits.