Inside the Federal Collection Machine: Defending Business Owners on Defaulted COVID EIDL Loans in 2026

Elizabeth (Beth) Milito, Executive Director | NFIB Small Business Legal Center

Elizabeth (Beth) Milito is the Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, the litigation and legal advocacy arm of the National Federation of Independent Business — the nation’s largest and most influential small business association. For more than two decades, Beth has stood on the front lines of virtually every major legal battle affecting American small business owners, from labor, employment, tax, and regulatory disputes to the unprecedented wave of pandemic-era relief programs and the federal collection actions now following in their wake. When COVID-19 shut down Main Street, Beth helped build and host NFIB’s celebrated COVID-19 weekly webinar series, guiding hundreds of thousands of small business owners in real time through the PPP, ERTC, and EIDL programs — the very loans whose defaults are now driving the federal collection machine into overdrive in 2026. Few attorneys in the country can match her combination of courtroom experience, policy influence, and day-to-day contact with the small business owners living through these collection actions.

• Education & Credentials

Beth earned her J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law, where she served as an editor of notes and comments for the Maryland Law Review, and her bachelor’s degree from The George Washington University. She began her legal career as a law clerk to Judge Alan M. Wilner of the Maryland Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.

• Recognition & Leadership

Named Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center in 2022 after 18 years as its Senior Executive Counsel, Beth is one of the most recognized legal voices for small business in the United States. She has testified repeatedly before the U.S. Congress — including the Senate Finance Committee — as well as federal agencies and state legislatures across the country, and she appears frequently in national media as a spokesperson on the legal and regulatory issues confronting Main Street businesses.

• Professional Involvement

Beth manages the Legal Center’s nationwide litigation and amicus program, advocating for small business interests in federal and state courts across the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court. She personally counsels small business owners facing employment discrimination charges, wage and hour claims, wrongful termination lawsuits, and government enforcement actions, and she develops online and on-site legal training programs that reach business owners nationwide.

• Experience

Before joining NFIB in 2004, Beth defended the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in employment and labor litigation and trained managers on fair employment practices, and she served as a trial attorney at Nationwide Insurance Company, taking more than 100 cases through trial to verdict. That rare courtroom-tested perspective — combined with her years guiding owners through the COVID relief programs themselves — makes her uniquely positioned to break down how the federal government is now pursuing defaulted COVID EIDL borrowers, and what defense counsel can do about it.

Robert (Rob) Smith, Senior Attorney | NFIB Small Business Legal Center

Rob Smith is a Senior Attorney with the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, where he has spent years in the trenches of the federal pandemic-relief programs — PPP, ERTC, and the COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program — advising small business owners from application through forgiveness, repayment, hardship accommodation, default, and now federal collection. As the SBA and U.S. Treasury escalate collection of the roughly $400 billion COVID EIDL portfolio, Rob has emerged as one of the most practical, borrower-focused legal voices in the country on what actually happens when these loans go into default — and how business owners and their counsel can respond. He brings to this program a working command of the statutes, regulations, and agency practices that make up the federal collection machine, sharpened by daily contact with the small business owners caught inside it.

• Education & Credentials

Rob graduated cum laude from the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan – Dearborn. He is a member of the State Bar of Michigan. Before joining NFIB, he served as a Law Clerk to a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, an experience that grounds his appellate practice and his instinct for how courts actually decide these cases.

• Recognition & Leadership

Rob has testified before the U.S. House Committee on Small Business on the cumulative burden of federal regulation on small businesses and on the federal government’s obligations under the Regulatory Flexibility Act, presenting the Legal Center’s research on how agencies underestimate the true cost of their rules for Main Street. His analysis and guidance — including the Legal Center’s work helping borrowers navigate Economic Injury Disaster Loans and U.S. Treasury collection efforts — are relied on by small business owners and practitioners nationwide.

• Professional Involvement

At the Legal Center, Rob regularly drafts and prepares amicus curiae briefs for filing in the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal courts of appeals, and state supreme courts across the country, shaping the case law that governs small business rights against the federal government. He is a frequent presenter in NFIB’s national webinar series and a contributor to the Legal Center’s legal guides and small business support resources.

• Experience

With more than six years advising small businesses on PPP, ERTC, and EIDL relief — spanning the life cycle of these programs from enactment to today’s enforcement and collection phase — Rob has fielded the real-world questions that defaulted borrowers and their attorneys are asking right now: Treasury offset, cross-servicing, hardship accommodation plans, personal guarantees, collateral, and the practical paths out of default. That makes him uniquely positioned to walk attendees through defending business owners against the federal collection machine on defaulted COVID EIDL loans in 2026.

SESSION 1 – From Default to Garnishment: A Guide of How SBA and Treasury Collect EIDLs | 12:00pm – 1:00pm

This session maps the federal administrative collection machinery that activates when a COVID EIDL borrower defaults — from SBA’s internal demand letters through Treasury cross-servicing, the Treasury Offset Program, and administrative wage garnishment. Attorneys will learn the federal government’s statutory authority under the Debt Collection Improvement Act (DCIA) of 1996, the precise stage-by-stage timeline of collection actions, and the due process triggers that create defense opportunities at each step. By the end of this session, practitioners will be able to identify where a client sits in the collection pipeline, recognize procedural failures by SBA and Treasury, and advise clients on the absence of any statute of limitations on federal administrative debt collection.

BREAK | 1:00pm – 1:10pm

SESSION 2 – Triaging Defaulted EIDL Clients: Borrower Options at Each Collection Stage | 1:10pm – 2:10pm

The second session will equip attorneys to assess a defaulted COVID EIDL client’s position based on which collection stage their loan is in — SBA servicing, Treasury offset, administrative wage garnishment, or DOJ referral — and to identify which defenses might be available. Resolution options remain available at each stage. Attendees will learn how to conduct an immediate intake triage, evaluate the personal guarantee threshold, and determine whether bankruptcy (including Subchapter V cramdown), a Treasury hearing, or another narrow option is the right path forward.