North Kent News

U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Zeeland) joined "The Frank Beckmann Show" on July 9 to discuss why he has been featured in the news for an unexpected reason.

Huizenga, who owns a company with his cousin, has been in the headlines lately because his company has been losing employees due to the COVID-19 pandemic. His company sought financial help from the government, and now the congressman has been receiving unwanted attention for the Paycheck Protection Program loan the company received.

With all the attention Huizenga is receiving for the PPP loan, Beckmann asked if there was anything unusual about the loan or the way he acquired it. 

"It's the exact same loan application that everybody else had went through, the same process and it did frankly exactly what it was supposed to do, which allowed our third-generation sand and gravel operation to retain our employees, rather than laying them off and putting them on to the unemployment rolls," Huizenga told Beckmann.

The Small Business Administration created the PPP to specifically give businesses grants to go towards paying employees while the business is forced to remain closed, Beckmann said.

Huizenga supports transparency and didn't want the public to think he was hiding the fact that he and his cousin were applying and receiving a PPP loan. 

"Here's the reason why it's coming to light. First of all, I have voted for transparency all the way through, partially because I knew that my company and my cousin, who's the president of the company, had made the decision to move ahead with the PPP program," he said on the show. "I didn't want to even have the appearance of looking like I was being secretive or hiding anything. So everything, every loan above $150,000, the names are being released. Obviously at $27,495, our company (name) didn't get released, but I wanted to proactively talk about it."

But Huizenga has another cousin with the same last name. This cousin owns a separate business and also received a PPP loan, but this company's loan was above $150,000, which means the last name "Huizenga" was released to the public.  

A local Holland newspaper saw that a company owned by someone with the last name "Huizenga" received a PPP loan and assumed it was the representative's company. 

"They assumed that it was the same person and decided to print a story that I had gotten this loan above $150,000, which wasn't even the case," Huizenga told Beckmann. "By the way, they had never even bothered to do a phone call to check in on whether that was true or not."

Regardless of the attention received for the PPP loan, Huizenga has made it clear to the public that his company did not receive a loan for more than $150,000. He also said he believes the PPP is a vital program that is needed for recovery. 

"We've got a long ways to go on this, but we would be in an even deeper hole if we had not had this PPP program," Huizenga told Beckmann.