The Biden administration is asking Congress for $22.5 billion to fund its ongoing response to the Covid-19 pandemic, a significant decrease from the $30 billion the Department of Health and Human Services told lawmakers that it would need two weeks ago. About $18.25 billion of the total would be used to boost public health programs, while $4.25 billion would target vaccine research and development.
The reduced request comes amid considerable Republican resistance to providing more federal funds for the pandemic response. As we told you yesterday, a group of GOP senators led by Mitt Romney of Utah sent a letter to the White House questioning the need for additional funding and demanding better accounting of the more than $5 trillion already provided by Congress. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Committee on Appropriations, told reporters Thursday that he would not support the Biden administration’s request.
“I think that we ought to determine — and we’ve asked the administration — how much unspent money is there,” Shelby said. “There are billions of dollars unspent. The American people need an accounting on how much is left. Let’s spend that first before we start borrowing more.”
Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the minority whip, said there was strong support in his caucus for Shelby’s approach, and that Republicans would oppose adding additional pandemic funding to the $1.5 trillion spending package for 2022 that lawmakers are trying to wrap up by March 11, at least until there’s a better sense of where and how funding has been used so far. “There’s a general belief that there’s a lot of money out there still floating around and before we put more out, we need to get an accounting for that,” Thune said. “And I think that includes even people who otherwise might be inclined to support some of the things that would be included there.”
Democrats said they will continue to push for the additional funding. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the money “is absolutely necessary” for dealing with the ongoing pandemic. “In fact, we probably will need more as we need more therapies,” she said. “This is science, this is going forward, so I would hope that they would see the wisdom of the science in terms of what we need for COVID because the last thing we need is more transmission,” she added.
