During the COVID-19 pandemic, Washington ordered businesses to close. It then lent many of those businesses money to survive the closures. Six years later, the government wants its money back — even from business owners who never recovered.
Page F2From§Eachthe noon edition — 7 September 2026
Washington expands 'small business' to include billion-dollar firms, then bills the actual small ones for their shutdown loans.
As it ran on the front
I don't have four thousand two hundred dollars. That's what the fan belt and the alternator both going in the same month cost me on the Buick — four thousand two hundred — and I've got about six hundred in the checking account and a dog that needs his teeth looked at, so no, I don't have it. I'm not complaining. I'm just telling you the number, because numbers are about the only thing in this business that don't lie to your face.
Here's another number, or two of them, that don't sit right next to each other. Washington ordered small businesses closed. Not a suggestion — an order. Then it lent those same businesses money to stay alive while they weren't allowed to open the doors. That's the receipt — that's what the Washington Examiner is reporting this week — and I believe it, because I've stood behind enough of those doors myself, waiting for a store to open that used to open at seven.…
…(cont) Six years later, the government wants that money back. From people who never got the doors open again the way they used to be. I'm sorry, I keep going back to this, but six years is a long time to carry a number on your back, and I want to know what the number turned into on the day it stopped being a lifeline and started being a debt.
Eleven days before that, on August 27th, the New York Times reported the administration wants to raise the revenue and employee limits that decide who counts as a "small business" for federal contracts and loans — raise them high enough that billion-dollar companies fit through the door marked SMALL. I'm sorry, I know I already brought up a date, but this is a different date — August 27th, then September, then the bill.
I used to have a scale in the garage, the kind you weigh a fish on, hanging off a nail by the workbench. You put a coffee can of bolts on one side and a coffee can of nothing on the other, and the nothing side goes up, every time, because that's what scales do. I think about that scale when I read that the government is putting a billion-dollar company on one side of the word "small" and a guy who had to close his doors on government orders on the other side. I'm sorry — third time, I know — but I keep coming back to the word, not the company, not the man, the word. It used to mean something you could carry across a room by yourself. Now it means whatever fits through the door that day.
I don't know what the guy with the loan is supposed to carry across the room. I know what my dog can carry across the room, which is a tennis ball, sometimes a slipper, and that's about it. I know what four thousand two hundred dollars weighs, because I don't have it. I don't know what it's like to owe the government money for staying closed when they told you to close, and then watch them widen the door for somebody else the same year. I'm sorry — one more time, I promise this is the last one — the same year.
Oh — before you go. One more thing. Which came first, the collection notice or the letter about billion-dollar businesses? Because the paper says August 27th for one and this week for the other, and I'm no accountant, but I can read a calendar. Small.
“They order the small business to close, loan it money to survive the closing, then six years on send a bill for the loan — the same year they widen the word "small" so billion-dollar companies can walk through that door too. That's not two stories, that's one door, built a different size depending on who's knocking. The guy who followed the order is the one who owes; the ones big enough not to need the word get it anyway.”
“Look, a loan is a loan — the government has every right to expect repayment, that's just fiscal responsibility, nobody's shutting anybody down twice. And raising the small-business size limits is just modernizing the definition for today's economy, keeping American companies competitive — it's not like we're just letting billion-dollar firms call themselves "small" so they can — okay, that is what it does, but that's not the point I was making.”
The receipts
· Trump Administration Wants Billion-Dollar Businesses to Qualify as ‘Small’ from the morgue, 27 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.