The Kenton County Democratic Party called out Northern Kentucky lawmaker Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-Taylor Mill) for accepting PPP loans during the pandemic, which is contradictory to the General Assembly’s stance on ending the COVID-19 State of Emergency that would end pandemic aid to Kentucky Families, according to the group.
“Republican lawmakers’ decision to cut off federal pandemic-related aid to our most vulnerable Kentuckians is indefensible, especially when they have personally benefited from pandemic relief monies,” said Danielle Bell, Chair of the Kenton County Democratic Party. “These legislators are taking food off the table for seniors, families, and kids while stuffing their own coffers.”
The KCDP elaborated that the Senator tweeted out his district shouldn’t receive funding for universal preschool “despite 88 percent of Covington Independent Students being eligible for free and reduced lunches, making his district the fourth-most impoverished student body in the state,” the release said.
“Someone who just received a million dollars worth of financial aid shouldn’t be denying people in far worse condition the opportunity to feed their families,” said Bell. “Sen. McDaniel and the rest of the supermajority need to wake up and support the Governor’s veto of their hypocritically cruel bill to end emergency funding,”
McDaniel is the President of his family company, McD Concrete, in Erlanger. According to the ProPublica PPP database, the company received two PPP loans during the pandemic, which were used exclusively for payroll. One loan totaled $412,500 and was forgiven. The other loan totaled $412,527, bringing the total of the two loans to $825,027.
“Like millions of other small businesses, who did everything we could to survive and provide for our employees throughout the course of the pandemic, we received PPP loans, and it was a natural course of doing business at that time, and we did survive and provide and have moved on to continue operation in a more normal environment,” McDaniel said.
