> Case in point, you mention the PPP loans, which were signed into law by a previous administration. The CARES act passed 96-0 in the Senate, and in the House

> Case in point, you mention the PPP loans, which were signed into law by a previous administration. The CARES act passed 96-0 in the Senate, and in the House was an overwhelming voice-vote. The large majority the house members and senators which voted for it are still in office, and Biden signed the PPP extension act of 2021. To pretend that this was a choice made by people no longer in government seems misleading. > Today with a new administration and a new situation, it doesn’t make sense to complain too hard about that. We should point it out the next time PPP-like loans are suggested ... Because a large majority were forgiven, these were mostly effectively grants, not loans. And after a bunch of people take your money, of course it's to their benefit if we all stop talking about that fact. But I don't think this is any more appropriate here than if a mugger tells you that their misdeeds are in the past and you should just move on and focus on other things despite the fact that they still have your wallet. > So yes, governments that are good at cleaning up messes are competent governments. Ideally they should also be good at not making messes, but the us government is an incredibly large entity, so messes are going to happen. I don't think this is more convincing than when a large tech service has a major outage and their ops team is competent in investigating and resolving the incident -- but that fact doesn't on its own mean that the organization is especially competent.