For Immediate Release
Friday, Sept. 2nd, 2022
Contact: Josselyn Berry, Jberry@azdem.org
ICYMI: Kari Lake Criticizes Federal Loan Forgiveness. Unless It’s Hers
Lake Tells Arizona: “I got mine, but I don’t want you to get yours.”
PHOENIX–Kari Lake wasted no time bashing the student loan forgiveness announced last week to provide relief for student borrowers. But Lake herself benefitted from a federal loan in April 2020 as part of the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that has been fully forgiven. Lake and her husband’s business, ZenVideo, received a $5,600 loan from the PPP program during the pandemic. Lake then turned around and paid her husband’s business thousands of dollars for campaign work, after the company was kept afloat thanks to the PPP loan it received.
“Does Kari Lake consider it a government handout when she had her own PPP loan forgiven?” Josselyn Berry, spokesperson for the Arizona Democratic Party said. “Or does she reserve her criticism only for hard-working Arizonans who are trying to keep their businesses and households afloat?”
- Phoenix New Times: “Kari Lake Bashes Federal Loan Forgiveness. Unless It’s Hers” The Republican nominee for Arizona governor publicly opposed recent federal action to provide relief for student loan borrowers across the country. But she also benefited from a federal loan in April 2020 that was later forgiven as part of the Paycheck Protection Program. That’s not stopping her from likening loan forgiveness to robbery when the money is going to college students saddled with debt, instead of her husband’s video production company that does work for her political campaign. It’s a classic case of rules for thee but not for me.
- Arizona Republic: “How Kari Lake gulped cash from the ‘McCain swamp’” After all that tough talk it might come as a surprise to Lake’s supporters that her plan to drain that notorious government swamp seems to have involved dipping the family bucket into the murky waters and carrying home a sloshy pail of cash. Yet her husband got cash from the PPP. After Lake joined the chorus of Republican hypocrites griping about President Joe Biden’s student debt relief program it was pointed out in a Phoenix New Times article that Lake’s husband had a loan of $5,663 forgiven under the government’s Paycheck Protection Program.