Some small businesses are suing the banks involved in doling out the loans claiming they didn’t process them on the first come first serve basis like they were supposed to but rather by the size of the fee they would receive. It’s left many mom and pop businesses wondering and worried about their future.

Kathy Bauer owns Louisa’s and Millie’s Chocolates in Downers Grove with her husband.

The small business they’ve owned for the past 15 years has five employees and had been doing well until COVID-19 .

“March was horrible,” Bauer said.

April was a little better thanks to Easter, but Bauer thought lasting help would come through the government’s $350 billion dollar Paycheck Protection Program – or PPP. The loans are processed by banks and would be fully forgiven if the money was used to keep employees on the payroll.

“We got into the portal within two hours after it opened,” Bauer said.

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He said they went from getting a case number, to going into the underwriting to not getting any return phone calls.

“We were aggressive pursuing this,” she said. “And I never got a straight answer on the trajectory on how we went from more or less being approved on Tuesday, to not having it at all by the end of business Thursday.”

Mel Washington is a musician with the band “Too White Crew” and teaches guitar lessons on the side. He lost money when all his gigs were cancelled and a handful of his students’ parents weren’t able to continue to pay for lessons. He too applied for PPP but by the time bank figured out he was eligible the money was gone.

“They weren’t very sure how to handle independent contractors,” he said. “It’s makes me think that those of us that aren’t multimillion dollar businesses aren’t really taken into consideration at all.”

But big businesses like the restaurant chain Shake Shack received funding, but the CEO announced Monday as this has all played out, two things are clear, the program was underfunded and it wasn’t set up for everyone to win.

Congress was said to be close to a deal, but there was no vote today.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said they will try again Tuesday.