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Marco Rubio
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ProfilePerson

Marco Rubio

Official · Congress

PPP · EIDL
Type
Person
Role
Official · Congress
Programs
PPP, EIDL
Updated

The profile

Senate Small Business chairman who helped turn the emergency small-business bill into PPP, then publicly defended PPP as the central payroll bridge of the CARES Act.

In the archive

He chaired the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship during the March 2020 PPP design fight and the first PPP rollout (committee releases). He served as a senator from Florida from 2011 until January 2025, when he became Secretary of State (State Department biography and Senate roll call).

Who they are

Marco Antonio Rubio is a Florida Republican who entered the Senate in 2011 (State Department biography). In March 2020 he chaired the Senate committee with jurisdiction over SBA lending. The committee's March 25, 2020 release names him as one of the four senators who secured the CARES Act small-business package, and its March 2021 release names him as one of PPP's four authors.12

Rubio became Secretary of State in January 2025 (State Department biography and Senate roll call vote 8 of Jan. 20, 2025).34

Pandemic-relief role

On March 12, 2020, Rubio announced a proposal to expand SBA 7(a) lending by $50 billion and waive lender and borrower fees for one year. It would also have raised guarantees to 90 percent, increased SBA Express limits and loosened some EIDL underwriting for smaller COVID loans.5 Within two weeks, the bipartisan small-business group had moved from that 7(a) expansion concept to the far larger CARES Act small-business division, which ran PPP through private lenders.

The bipartisan press release came from Ranking Member Ben Cardin on March 25, 2020. It identified Cardin, Rubio, Susan Collins, and Jeanne Shaheen as the group that secured $377 billion for small businesses in the stimulus. The release described the PPP as nearly $350 billion in zero-fee loans of up to $10 million. Up to eight weeks of payroll and other costs would be forgiven if employers kept workers and wage levels. It also noted a cap on what banks could earn to process applications and a statutory priority for underserved borrowers.1

Rubio's committee then became a running forum for oversight and defense of the program. He chaired a June 2020 hearing on Title I implementation and, on Nov. 17, 2020, asked Treasury and SBA for PPP audit plans.67 He also argued that the program had saved jobs fast enough to justify its tradeoffs. On May 28, 2020 he joined Cardin in welcoming the $10 billion PPP set-aside for CDFIs, which they described as channels for borrowers without prior banking relationships.6 In December 2020, his committee circulated his CNBC op-ed and a long Medium analysis calling PPP "the single largest federal fiscal policy program enacted in recent history" and "the single most effective relief program passed by Congress." The same release said PPP had injected more than $525 billion into the economy in less than four months and supported up to 55 million jobs.7

The Benworth loan and letter, 2021

In January 2021 Benworth Capital Partners, a Miami private lender run by Bernie Navarro, a top fundraiser for his campaigns, lent Rubio $850,000 as a one-year bridge loan at 7.5 percent (Miami Herald). That spring Benworth made about 300,000 PPP loans through Womply's platform; a JAMS arbitrator later counted 304,897 Benworth PPP loans worth $4.02 billion and awarded Womply about $117.9 million in unpaid fees (corrected final award). Rubio repaid the loan on July 28, 2021, about six months early. On August 16, 2021 Benworth and two other Florida lenders asked the SBA to cap what a lender could pay a loan agent at 50 percent of its fees, applied to loans already made. Benworth was fighting Womply over those fees at the time. Ten days later Rubio wrote to the SBA asking for "clarification in writing, or through new rulemaking"; the letter named no lender and did not mention the loan. The SBA restated its existing rule. His 2021 Senate financial disclosure, filed May 16, 2022, listed no Benworth loan; an amendment filed August 30, 2022 added it, "Paid off in full during the reporting period."

Rubio has not been charged with any crime. The loan, the August 2021 letter and the amended disclosure are documented in the Womply–Benworth litigation exhibits and the Senate filings above; no ethics-committee action or other proceeding concerning them appears in the records we have.

Since 2025

Rubio left the Senate to become Secretary of State in January 2025 (State Department biography and Senate roll call vote 8 of Jan. 20, 2025).

Documents on this site

Original source documents and archived copies

Sources

  1. Senate Small Business Committee, "Cardin, Bipartisan Senate Task Force Secure $377 Billion for Small Businesses," Mar. 25, 2020. Local archive: 007 www sbc senate gov public index cfm-2020-3-cardin bipartisan senate task force secure-377-billion for small businesses ↩
  2. Senate Small Business Committee, "Cardin, Collins & Shaheen Introduce Bill to Extend PPP," Mar. 11, 2021 — states that Collins, Cardin, Shaheen and Rubio authored the PPP. Local archive: 054 www sbc senate gov public index cfm-2021-3-cardin collins shaheen introduce bill to extend ppp ↩
  3. Senate Small Business Committee, "Chairman Rubio to Introduce Bill to Help Small Businesses Impacted by Coronavirus," Mar. 12, 2020. Local archive: 006 www sbc senate gov public index cfm-2020-3-chairman rubio to introduce bill to help small businesses impacted by coronavirus ↩
  4. Senate Small Business Committee, "Rubio Chairs Hearing on the Implementation of Title I of the CARES Act," June 2020. Local archive: 026 www sbc senate gov public index cfm-2020-6-now rubio chairs hearing on the implementation of title i of the cares act ↩
  5. Senate Small Business Committee, "Chairman Rubio Sends Letter to Treasury and SBA Requesting PPP Audit Plans," Nov. 2020. Local archive: 040 www sbc senate gov public index cfm-2020-11-chairman rubio sends letter to treasury and sba requesting ppp audit plans ↩
  6. Senate Small Business Committee, "Cardin, Rubio Welcome SBA & Treasury's PPP Set-Aside for CDFIs," May 28, 2020. Local archive: 019 www sbc senate gov public index cfm-2020-5-cardin rubio welcome sba treasury s ppp set aside for cdfis ↩
  7. Senate Small Business Committee, "Rubio Details Historic Success of the Paycheck Protection Program," Dec. 10, 2020. Local archive: 044 www sbc senate gov public index cfm-2020-12-rubio details historic success of the paycheck protection program ↩
  8. U.S. Department of State, "Marco Rubio" biography. Marco Rubio (U.S. Department of State) (original: state.gov · stored capture) ↩
  9. U.S. Senate roll call vote 119-1, vote 8, confirmation of Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State, Jan. 20, 2025. Senate Vote 8 (119th Congress): Marco Rubio Confirmation (original: senate.gov · stored capture) ↩
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