The Forgiveness Debate Continues | EIDL Update

Responding to some YouTube comments. Hi there, I'm Trevor, your EIDL expert. Thanks for tuning in. If your business received an SBA COVID economic injury disaster loan or EIDL, then this video is for you. As part of our continuing series of videos for COVIDversary five years after the pandemic, I'm going to respond to a couple of YouTube comments in today's video. But first, a brief word about broccoli. Do you like broccoli? I personally happen to love broccoli. Linda Rae is crazy about broccoli. In fact, I have standing orders. When I prepare meals, I am to provide her with broccoli as opposed to green beans, peas, Brussels sprouts, or pretty much any other green vegetable. It's all about broccoli for Linda Rae. The funny thing about broccoli is not everybody likes broccoli. Don't you remember when you were a kid and your mom would tell you eat that broccoli on your plate? Or if you had a dad like my Scottish dad, here, finish what's on your bloody plate. That kid's starving out there in the world. Like that. And you had to eat that broccoli. I didn't really have an issue with it. My siblings, they had an issue with it. So broccoli is one of those divisive issues that folks can have about, you know, eating food. You weren't supposed to eat the broccoli. Here's another divisive issue for you folks with the COVID EIDLs. Forgiveness. That's a divisive issue. If you've been a subscriber and a supporter of our channel for any length of time, going all the way back five years ago, speaking of COVIDiversary, to videos we did all the way back then, I have been saying to you as a financing services professional, a retired mortgage banker, 30 years of doing government lending, and now five years of working with the SBA EIDL program, I have said time and time and time and time, these loans will never be forgiven. And yet we still see folks coming into our comments section saying, I hate broccoli. Forgiveness. These loans should be forgiven. You see the connection? Broccoli, forgiveness. The issue with forgiveness, separate and apart from my opinion that these loans will never be forgiven. And I think a lot of people mistake that opinion for the idea that I don't want them to be forgiven. I do. I agree with you. The Congress should do more. And that is essentially what I'm going to discuss in response to some YouTube comments today. About Congress and about the Small Business Administration and surveying the landscape of the business challenges, the economic challenges that you small business owners continue to face five years after the pandemic. And I think, like the divisive issue of broccoli, that idea of forgiveness is a convenient touchstone, if you will, for people to argue about these loans, for people to pour their pain about eating broccoli. I mean, about having to take these loans during the pandemic, as opposed to bringing yourself into the moment. Because maybe when you were a kid, you hated broccoli. But today, like Linda Rae, you love broccoli. Instead of focusing on this idea of forgiveness for something that happened in the past, a loan which, by the way, saved the American economy. It saved your business. So you can't really say now, I should never have taken this loan. These loans should be forgiven because I'm having struggles. That's the wrong argument. Because as an adult, if I served you dinner, and we have a friend coming over for dinner tomorrow night. And by the way, I'm going to be serving her broccoli. If as an adult, she said, you know what, I don't really like broccoli. We'd all be okay with that. If you bring yourself into the present moment, and realize that you're harping on, you're leaning on this crutch of this idea of forgiveness is a waste of your mental energy, a waste of your time and your emotion. These comments we see about forgiveness, folks are like losing their minds. Instead, your focus should be on your congressional representative. We did a video recently about Congress, Congress must act. And in that video, I discuss how your congressional representatives continue to fail you day in and day out by failing to understand your challenges, to listen to you to hear about a COVID loan you took, repayment challenges, inflation, employee issues, supply chain issues, tariffs, current economic conditions, how your customer base has changed. Since the pandemic, your congressional representatives are failing you. They are not listening to you. And as a result, they are not supporting the Small Business Administration. Instead, they are demanding that the Small Business Administration collect every penny of these COVID loans. And that's making you all crazy. The way your mom made you crazy when you were a kid telling you you had to eat your broccoli. Your Congress is responsible for your troubles in repaying the loan. Because if your Congress listened to you, the constituents who vote for them, your Congress would then turn to the SBA, give them the funding they need to improve their technology. Because even today, SBA emails still go to the spam folders. And that's because of antiquated security certificates, antiquated technology. That's just one example. And then there's SBA transactional processes. Like someone who commented recently how the SBA forced that business to fail because they wanted to sell a piece of equipment. And as per the terms of the loan agreement, they contacted the SBA to get permission to sell an asset. And the purpose of selling that machine, that asset was to replace it with a more modern machine. They got rid of the old machine to get a new machine. That's a process they had for their business. Many of you follow the same process. But the SBA said to them, no, no, you're selling that asset. You've got to use that money to pay back the loan. And that forced the business out of the business. That does not sound like an agency that supports small business. So it's about your congressional representative. It's not about forgiveness or broccoli. Contact your congressperson today. Before I go into the YouTube comments for COVIDiversary, if you could take a moment to hit that thumbs up. And when you like a video, we get it. You know, we see the numbers and we thank you for that. We appreciate the support. But what you're really doing and what we're really asking you to do with the simple action of clicking on the thumbs up is you're telling YouTube that this video has value and YouTube will share this video and our other videos with other small business owners who are struggling with these challenges at the SBA, just like you. It's a very small price we ask you to pay for this advice, for this expertise that we share with you here on this channel. And if you are not already subscribed, please come on. How many times do we have to ask you to subscribe? If you're watching our videos on a regular basis, you'll know I repeat the statistic over and over again. More than 70 percent of you folks watching our video are not subscribed. Click on the subscribe button right now. Click the bell for notifications because we like to believe that this information that we're giving to you has value to you and you want to be updated when we share something that's important for your business and your COVID EIDL. So hit the bell for notifications. If you want to book a one hour paid consultation call, there's a link in the description for you to do that. If you want to buy our new guidebook for short term payment assistance to help improve your chances of success with the SBA to approve your request for a new six month 50 percent payment reduction, you can click on the link in the description. And the cost of the guidebook is cheaper than the cost of a one hour call. If you are a CPA or an attorney and you're watching this, you don't know you need it. But I'm telling you, as a colleague, as a financing services professional, you, an accountant, a CPA, an attorney, you need our EIDL resource hub. You need it because we hear from your customers all the time about the wrong information you share with them about how to process a transaction at the SBA. Something as simple as selling assets, something as simple as changing ownership. We've done multiple transactions with the SBA where the business owners had attorneys involved, had accountants involved. And, you know, those attorneys and accountants were not helpful to those borrowers with the SBA transaction, which is why they found us. We have no reason to exist but for the lack of knowledge about this program out there. If you are an accountant, a CPA, an attorney, or if you as a small business owner could take a moment and share this video with your professionals in your network, y'all need to buy our EIDL resource hub because that is the professional compendium with my expert advice, knowledge, and experience. SBA forms, templates, every aspect of the SBA process that you need to help your clients. And now to COVIDiversary comments from YouTube. This is from Wata99 who shared this recently and they told us the SBA is no longer answering calls. This looks like a crying smiling face. I don't know what you call that. I'm not big with emojis myself. The biggest scam ever perpetrated on the American small businesses. As I said earlier, I disagree with this statement because it's not about a scam. It's about the lack of support, the lack of direction from Congress. Your congressional representatives, instead of demanding the SBA do better to collect all of this money, should instead be supporting these small business administration and asking them to expand their programs and to reach out to you and to be more communicative and more understanding of the challenges you're facing. Because if they did that little thing, they would not only collect these loans, which are otherwise going to go into default and bankruptcy and fail to pay altogether. So they would not only improve the collections by a simple positive action, but secondly, they would continue their mission of protecting the American taxpayer against the losses of these loans. You see that connection? These congressional people, these senators, they're demanding collect, collect, collect, fraud, fraud, fraud, but they're missing the point. And I say this to you, having been a lender for 30 years and having to explain to people who are borrowing money to buy a house or refinance a house what was involved or the COVID pandemic with the clients that hired us. And as I got them approved, how we explain the loan terms and explain the repayment requirements. If your SBA did that, because Congress asked them to do that, your experiences would be more positive and the experiences of collecting the monies would improve and protect the American taxpayer. See? Broccoli. The next comment I have here for our COVIDiversary is from Ashy1185. And Ashy actually sent us a couple of comments. The first one was that I submitted my hardship round two in March, followed up in April when my hardship ended. If you don't already know, the SBA had a program called Hardship Accommodation Program, which would allow you to reduce your payments by as much as 90% for a six-month period, and then a second six-month period, and then continue that for a total of two and a half years of reduced payments. But that program was ended arbitrarily and capriciously and without any input from you constituents by the SBA administrator on March 19th with no notice at all. Just shut it down. Leaving people like Ashy1185 to wonder and worry and lose sleep at night about what they're going to do. Because these are folks who are honest folks. You are honest folks who want to repay these loans. How is it the SBA cannot understand that about you? I talk to you all the time here on YouTube and on the one-hour consulting calls. I hear the trepidation in your voice because you are honorable people who are trying to repay a debt, and you don't want to get into trouble with the federal government. Why can't they do a better job of simply understanding that about you and embracing that to move forward with a more positive energy? And again, if you're a small business owner with a COVID EIDL, you need to do a couple of things. Number one, you need to like this video right now and tell YouTube to share this video with other people. You need to subscribe to our channel and click the bell for notifications, and you need to share this video with your CPA, with your accountant, with your bookkeeper, with your CFO, with your attorney, anyone in your professional network who advises other business owners about this program. Because I promise you they don't have this knowledge that we have gleaned from working on this program for five years. Ashy 1185 continues. Followed up in April when my hardship ended, continued to make payments, and they still charged off my account to the United States Treasury. Just last year, we saw the SBA send 860,000 loans to the US Treasury for collections. People freaked out. People who were trying to repay the loans. People who had problems with the SBA's payment systems. They put it on autopay. The payment failed. SBA didn't notify them. They just marked it as delinquent and put it into the next month until somebody got a letter from the US Treasury saying you're in collections because you're six months behind on your payments. And all kinds of other issues. And we helped hundreds of people to get their loans returned from collections to the US Treasury last year back to the SBA via the Hardship Accommodation Program. We were interviewed by this reporter, Lewis Kam from NBCUniversal. He interviewed several of our clients. So you can click on the link in the description to read this article. I encourage you to read it because it's a horror story. And you don't want to experience this horror story as is happening still with ASHI 1185. And I'm sure other people like this commenter where they continue to make their payments but the SBA charged off their loan and sent it to collections at the US Treasury. But wait, this gets worse before it actually gets better. ASHI goes on to say, I get government payment. Do I still qualify for the new program? Meaning the Short-Term Payment Assistance Program. We commented on that. ASHI then came back just a few days ago and said, the loan was reversed. Thank God. Now I'm going to apply for the new program. And here it comes. Are you ready? They, meaning SBA, said it was a mistake. These are people's lives. These are people's livelihoods, the SBA. What are you doing, SBA? Congress, what are you doing? Why are you not doing more to support the Small Business Administration so that they can improve their procedures, improve their communications, improve their technology to make it better for honorable people to repay these loans that saved their businesses and saved the American economy? Congress, you need to do more. SBA, you need to do more. And small business owners, you need to contact your congressional representatives. Of course, you do that after you like this video. Hit that thumbs up after you subscribe to the channel. And if you'd like to book a one-hour call with me, there's a link on the description you can click on. If you'd like to buy our Short-Term Payment Assistance Guidebook with my expert advice on how you can improve your chances of success with this new program, there's a link in the description for you to purchase that as well. And please, I would ask you again and again and again, please tell your accountant about us. Tell your attorney about us. Share this video with them. Insist that they watch our videos to learn how they can better help you. We have our calendar open only for another two weeks until the end of May. And after that, we're closing the calendar again. We don't offer any other consulting services. That's why we're encouraging you to share our videos with your accountants and attorneys so they can better serve you, their small business constituents. As always, Linda Rae and I thank you so very much for your support on our channel. You've really shown us how you believe this information is valuable and I don't know any other way to share our heartfelt appreciation to you for supporting us. I'll see you on the next video. Thanks for tuning in.