SBA Hot Topic Tuesday – Senator Rubio Receives the Coleman 2022 Main Street Lender of the Year Award

September 20, 2022

Delaney Sexton
Contributing Editor

SBA Hot Topic Tuesday – Senator Rubio Receives the Coleman 2022 Main Street Lender of the Year Award

Last week, Chris Hurn, Fountainhead’s Founder and CEO, awarded Senator Marco Rubio with the Coleman 2022 Main Street Lender of the Year award. Senator Rubio was chosen as Main Street Lender of the Year for his instrumental role in the creation of the Paycheck Protection Program that protected small businesses from “massive Main Street failures”.

Here are Senator Rubio’s thoughts on the Paycheck Protection Program and what would have happened without it:

I’m speculating here, but I think we would have had civil unrest, I mean substantial civil unrest in the country. I think it’s hard to envision that, but I think that’s what we would have faced, and I also think we would have had catastrophic, permanent, almost irreversible damage to the architecture of our economy.

Imagine for a moment going to any strip mall in America today and imagine every one of those doors closed and what that would have looked like. That’s what would have happened, and it would have spread into the banking sector. You’re a small business, you owe money, you can’t pay it because you’re out of business, you default, and that massive default basically makes vulnerable now all the assets of all the lending institutions which would have had a paralyzing effect on lending. It would have paralyzed our economy.

We would have been scrambling to try to figure this out, not to mention a lot of people were really struggling because our unemployment system couldn’t handle the crush it was hit with. Imagine if everybody had hit it. That’s what would have happened.

First, I don’t consider this to be a bailout. A bailout is when you did something wrong, and we come and save you. These are small businesses that were told you can’t work… You’re depriving them of the right to earn a living. [The government has] some obligation. Second, they didn’t make a penny. All that money had to go to rent or had to go to pay salaries for their employees.

Watch the full interview HERE.