Whether PPP Loans Were "Really" Cash Transfers Isn't Relevant

Here's the Federalist summarizing a lot of conservative sentiment on the comparison between student loan forgiveness and PPP loans:

PPP loans, unlike student loans, were intended to be cash transfers from the government. They were structured to be forgivable “loans” before the law was passed. No one broke a contract. No one changed the parameters of the loans. No president walked in and unilaterally transferred the responsibility of PPP payments to other businesses.

This is supposed to be some kind of gotcha, but as a moral distinction it fails utterly. OK, they weren't really loans but cash transfers. So: why were cash transfers given to many vastly rich businesses and individuals and not to people struggling under the weight of student loans? The inflation concerns seem bogus to me - the loans have been paused for two years already and will soon restart - but even if we think in inflationary terms, PPP appears to have been far worse. “It's taxpayer money, taking from Mom and Pop!” to forgive $10k in loans? Then what's it called when you give Jared Kushner, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Nancy Pelosi's rich husband, Khloe Kardashian, Reese Witherspoon, and Tom Brady hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars? People complain that some of the student debtors were well off, but PPP funds went to businesses that were already filthy rich. A straight up gift of millions to millionaires seems more ethically offensive than forgiving far less debt per student borrower!

The Catholic church got billions from PPP. So we're picking favorites among religions and giving an organization that participated in an international conspiracy to cover up child rape billions, but this is just government working as intended? I'm not supposed to get mad about my tax dollars being spent for that purpose? All the people saying “when are we going to forgive mortgages or car loan debt,” why couldn't those things have been paid for with the PPP money instead? You can say we needed the stimulus and maybe we did, but we appear to have seriously overstimulated the economy. None of this makes any sense to me.

If you think Biden's $10k is bad policy, say so. But the kind of policy question it represents is “what should the federal government spend money on?” And in that context, PPP loans are directly and uncomplicatedly relevant to the question. Why we should spend billions on stimulative grants to the already-wealthy and not on forgiving student loans seems like a germane and appropriate question for our current moment.

Signed, a guy who's not getting any forgiveness regardless and so has no personal stake in the game.