Kevin McCarthy criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the delay in providing additional funding for the Paycheck Protection Program, which distributes small-business loans.
The House minority leader joined Fox & Friends on Monday and said Democrats continued to hold up a deal on the program and that Pelosi specifically has failed to help the public during the pandemic.
“Name me one productive thing Speaker Pelosi has accomplished in this pandemic. When President Trump, on Jan. 31, put in the ban from China, Feb. 24, she asked people to gather together in San Francisco. She actually fought the ban. When we wanted to put the CARES Act together, she came in, held it up. Now, we had a small-business program working. She’s now held up the money.”
The program was established as part of the $2.3 trillion CARES Act, created to offset the economic consequences of COVID-19 and the ensuing stay-at-home orders. The Small Business Administration will forgive loans if employees are paid for eight weeks.
The $350 billion program ran out of funding on Thursday, leaving millions of small businesses without access to loans.
McCarthy touted the success of the program, saying that 1.6 million businesses had requested money to pay employees and to pay overhead expenses but that there were 700,000 unfunded loan applications, adding, “Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi has held that [additional funding] up for the last 2 weeks.”
“How many more millions of Pelosi’s layoffs will we have to endure before she will put people before politics? Even at this moment, to get this agreement, we could have been done yesterday. But the Democrats continue to hold up even though we have agreed to all the numbers.”
