Letter: Misleading editorial

As a decades long subscriber of the Daily Herald never have I read a "Our View" commentary that was so misleading and just flat-out wrong as the one on the fraudulent abuse of the "one time emergency program" (PPP).

The entire article goes on about "this debacle" and how the State of Illinois is the cause of over $1.9 billion of the $3.6 billion alotted to the state being fraudulent.

In the ninth paragraph there is the slight mention "Was this a failure of the Trump administration to distribute funds appropriately so states could block hackers and scammers?"

In March of 2020, then-Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin fought successfully to have absolutely any oversight of the payments of the $2.2 trilllion economic stabilization package. The head of an independent accountability panel created by the law alerted lawmakers almost immediately that lawyers from the Treasury Department were interpreting the statute in a way to exempt it from any scrutiny. Trump immediately fired the individual.

This entire debacle rests at the feet of the Republicans and former President Trump.

I expect misinformation of this type from online sources, not the Daily Herald.

Jack Halpin

Arlington Heights