Senate negotiators are closing in on a bipartisan deal to direct $10 billion more toward combatting the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’ve reached an agreement in principle on all the spending and all of the offsets,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), the lead GOP negotiator, told reporters Thursday, adding that the new spending is “entirely balanced by offsets,” meaning that it is paid for by savings elsewhere.
“Romney said the bill would be paid for ‘almost exclusively’ by redirecting money from the American Rescue Plan -- the law that Democrats pushed through last year,” CNN reports. “As part of the offsets, he said that they are pulling money that would have gone to states to provide grants for local businesses.”
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), another Republican negotiator, said that half of the new money would go toward therapeutics and the other half would be directed to the Department of Health and Human Services, which would have “broad discretion” on how to use it for Covid-related needs.
Not done yet: The goal is to pass the bill next week — the Senate has adjourned for this week — but the legislative text still needs to be drafted and scored by the Congressional Budget Office, and other senators signaled that the deal had yet to be finalized.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that negotiators are “getting close to a final agreement that would garner bipartisan support,” but that some more work needs to be done.
"We are working diligently to finalize language of scoring and the final agreement on what should be funded in the final COVID package both domestic and international," Schumer said, He added that he would reschedule a procedural vote planned for today “as a sign of good faith, and to encourage us to come to a final agreement.”
The additional funding would be less than half the $22.5 billion the White House had sought — and less than the $15.6 billion that had initially been packaged with a $1.5 trillion annual spending bill passed by Congress earlier this month. Democrats were forced to pull that Covid funding from the bill after some of their members objected to a compromise that would have repurposed billions of dollars in previously approved pandemic aid to states. Republicans have insisted throughout the talks that the cost of any new spending be covered by unspent funds from previous pandemic relief bills.
The latest round of funding was reportedly scaled back by dropping roughly $5 billion aimed at helping boost global vaccination efforts. “I don’t think the Dems would agree to offsets that would allow them to cover that. So it’s dropped down to the size that they were willing to pay for,” Sen. John Thune (R-SD), a member of Senate Republican leadership, told The Hill on Wednesday night.
