Small business aid went beyond hard-hit companies, data show

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government on Monday identified roughly 650,000 mostly small businesses and nonprofits that received taxpayer money from a program that likely helped prevent the job market meltdown from growing worse but that also benefited some politically connected firms. The Treasury Department identified just a fraction of the total borrowers, naming only those companies that got loans of more than $150,000. Those firms made up less than 15% of the nearly 5 million small companie