Paycheck Protection Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, back in March, as the coronavirus pandemic began to grip our country, the Senate's historic CARES Act set up the Paycheck Protection Program to help protect American workers from layoffs during the crisis.

Thanks especially to its chief architects, Senator Rubio and Senator Collins, the PPP has literally saved tens of millions of American jobs. Our colleagues' bold policy has meant the mailboxes of working families in all 50 States have continued to bring people their regular paychecks instead of pink slips.

Through the end of May, this remarkable program has delivered more than half a trillion dollars to keep American workers on payroll all across our country.

One recent survey found that more than three-quarters--three- quarters--of all small business owners have applied for a PPP loan and more than 90 percent of those applicants have received one.

The Senate has always committed to standing behind this popular program. Back in April when it ran low on funds, we worked together to add more resources, and today we are passing another piece of legislation that makes a few targeted changes to the program.

To help workers and small businesses through these lengthy shutdowns that are just now beginning to ease, we are increasing the loan forgiveness period from 8 weeks to 6 months.

Since keeping workers on payroll obviously requires small businesses to stay afloat in the first place, we are expanding firms' ability to use these funds to meet obligations like their rent, their mortgage, or their utility bills, but we maintain the overall requirement to avoid layoffs to keep the strong protection for workers in place. And we are providing payroll tax deferral for the small businesses involved.

This is a bipartisan bill that passed the House overwhelmingly. I am proud the Senate is sending it on to the President's desk to become law.

I want to thank Senator Collins and Senator Rubio once more for their leadership in authoring this historic program in the first place. They have kept right on with their essential leadership, carefully monitoring the policy as it has taken effect.

I know they have identified further technical fixes in addition to the issues we are addressing today, and I hope and anticipate the full Congress will look at addressing those as well in the future.

I also want to thank Senator Daines, Senator Tillis, and Senator Gardner for their hard work on these modifications.

The Senate delivered for workers and small businesses when we first passed the CARES Act. We delivered again when we added more money to this popular program back in April, and we are delivering again today.

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