WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), issued the following statement regarding the urgent need to replenish the Paycheck Protection Program portion of the CARES Act:

“The Small Business Administration and the Department of the Treasury report that the Paycheck Protection Program will exhaust its funding in a matter of hours. It will have to stop accepting applications for job-saving loans. Democrats have spent days blocking emergency funding for Americans’ paychecks and now the bipartisan program has run dry.

“This did not have to happen. Republicans have been sounding the alarm for more than a week. Last Thursday, Senate Republicans tried to pass a narrow and clean bill that would have simply put more money into this critical program without changing any of the underlying policies that passed the Senate and the House unanimously. Democrats blocked it. Even as the program is saving millions of American jobs, Speaker Pelosi has said she sees “no data as to why we need” to keep funding it.

“It has been stunning to watch our Democratic colleagues treat emergency funding for Americans’ paychecks like a Republican priority which they need to be goaded into supporting. Funding a bipartisan program should not be a partisan issue. The notion that crucial help for working people is not appealing enough to Democrats without other additions sends a strange message about their priorities.

“The cost of continued Democratic obstruction will be pink slips and shuttered businesses. We hope Democrats see reason soon and finally heed Republicans’ repeated calls for a funding bill that can quickly earn unanimous consent from all 100 senators and become law.”