House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Wednesday that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats were to blame for anticipated layoffs from the past two weeks, saying their demands to restructure a small-business relief package caused delays that hurt employment.
“Tomorrow, we’ll find out how many more Americans got laid off in the last week. Those will be on Pelosi,” McCarthy said on Wednesday morning.
“She wasted two weeks as small business ran out of money to keep employees on the payroll,” the California Republican said.
McCarthy was referring to the two weeks of negotiations that occurred between Democrats and Republicans before the Senate passed a new small-business and hospital aid package on Tuesday worth more than $480 billion that is aimed at addressing the coronavirus outbreak.
Thursday’s Labor Department report on jobless claims is expected to show that another 4 million people were laid off last week.
However, Democrats say that their demands for the relief package are what secured more federal aid for coronavirus testing, hospitals, and underserved small businesses that have struggled to get relief loans.
“We can all be proud that we flipped this emergency package from an insufficient Republican plan that left behind hospitals and health workers,” said Pelosi in a statement on Tuesday, “and did nothing to aid the survival of the most vulnerable small businesses.”
“Instead, what was presented today on the floor of the Senate was a strong agreement that follows the path set by the bipartisan CARES Act and recommended by congressional Democrats,” Pelosi added.
