Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

25. Small Business Administration · Minor

Bring in private-sector expertise to close out COVID-19 loan programs

Partially done

753 25. Small Business Administration

“Consider bringing in private-sector support and expertise to close out these programs. Forgiveness and fraud must be dealt with as swiftly as possible, and law enforcement officials must pursue fraud vigorously.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The SBA brought private-sector capability in: it formalized the Fraud Prevention Pilot Program it had launched earlier in 2026 into a standing deployment of Palantir Technologies software "to identify, investigate, and help prosecute fraud in pandemic-era small business relief programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program … and COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan program", working with the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, DOJ, SBA OIG and other law-enforcement partners. That is the private-sector support and expertise the Quote asks for. The programs are not closed out: forgiveness and fraud work is continuing, with over 150,000 borrowers suspended across five states and $22 billion referred for collection.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The ask’s verb is “Consider bringing in private-sector support and expertise”; the SBA did more than consider, so the question is only whether the object — closeout of the COVID-19 loan and grant programs — is in the asked-for state. It is not, which is why this is partial and not done.
  • The release names the pilot as having launched “earlier this year” without a date; no separate announcement of the pilot’s launch appears in the SBA newsroom index for 2026, so the event is dated to the formalization.
  • Adjacent closeout evidence not cited here because it belongs to the narrower asks: Shuttered Venue Operators Grants and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund are both recorded in the FY2027 Budget Appendix as “no longer making new awards”, and the SBA referred $34 million of past-due SVOG debt to Treasury on 2026-08-19.
Action
other
Object
closeout of COVID-19 loan and grant programs
ID
2047