President Joe Biden visited a family-owned hardware store in Washington, DC Tuesday morning to highlight the continued need for aid to small businesses created by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Washington Post reports.
During his visit to W.S. Jenks & Sons in Northeast section of DC, Biden pushed the fact that the provisions of the American Recovery Plan bill just passed by Congress put added safeguards in place to make sure small business were the ones receiving aid.
“A lot of money [from the Paycheck Protection Program went to people who shouldn’t have gotten help,” Biden said to the store’s owner, Mike Siegel, in a jab at the Trump administration’s lack of oversight in aid distribution.
Siegel noted that his store, which has been around since 1866, saw a bit of a boom during the pandemic as homeowners used the self-isolation to make improvements to their homes.
Jenks & Sons and a small urban farm on the same property, Little Wild Things Farm, both received PPP loans and would qualify for additional aid under the Biden program.