Trump Administration

Eric Boehm | 12.5.2024 1:15 PM

The pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a bloated, wasteful mess—and now the guy responsible for running it is getting a promotion.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he'd nominated Michael Faulkender to be his deputy Treasury Secretary, effectively the second-in-command position at one of the federal government's most vital departments. Faulkender is a professor of finance at the University of Maryland's business school and serves as chief economist for the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank founded in 2021.

"Mike is a distinguished economist and policy practitioner who will drive our America-first agenda," Trump posted on Truth Social.

Faulkender was the assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department during the first Trump administration, and it was in that role that he oversaw the PPP, a stimulus program that ultimately distributed more than $800 billion.

That money was supposed to go to businesses that had been shuttered by the pandemic (or by various governmental edicts), and it was supposed to keep furloughed workers on the payroll until reopening. In fairness, at least some of the PPP's budget was used for that purpose, but we........

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