White House asks for $2.5B to fight coronavirus
Trump administration officials told senators at a closed briefing Tuesday morning that the White House’s request to spend $2.5 billion to combat the deadly coronavirus disease outbreak was just the beginning, with more needed as early as this fall.
Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said the first tranche of funding, submitted to Capitol Hill Monday night for review, would finance efforts to contain the COVID-19 disease through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
At that point, according to Blunt and Bill Cassidy, R-La., the White House would seek additional funding, possibly as part of a stopgap funding bill, full-year fiscal 2021 appropriations package or both.
“It seems to me the administration’s request is low-balling it, possibly,” Appropriations Chairman Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., told Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar at a Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee hearing. “If you low-ball something like this, you’ll pay for it later.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York took to the floor Tuesday to call for at least $3.1 billion upfront, including more reimbursements to state and local health officials and to avoid cutting other programs. Schumer said the new White House request was tantamount to “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
At the early morning briefing, senators heard from several administration officials, including from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, departments of State and Homeland Security and the Office of Management and Budget. Attendees said the administration envisions spending $1.5 billion of the requested money on vaccine development in fiscal 2020 alone, with more likely needed down the road.
“We’re playing catch-up and we still don’t have full access” to information from the Chinese government about the extent of the COVID-19 problem, according to Benjamin L. Cardin, DMd.
“The bad news is this is a very aggressive virus,” said Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., also a senior appropriator. Alexander said lawmakers would act to provide additional funds but he wasn’t sure if $2.5 billion was sufficient. “If it’s not enough, we’ll appropriate more,” he said.
Democrats have already blasted the administration proposal as falling short of what’s needed. Only $1.25 billion of the request would be new funding designated as an emergency, with the remainder pulled from unspent funds previously appropriated for other purposes.
On top of the $1.25 billion, the White House wants to divert $535 million lawmakers just put into the final 2020 spending law for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund to “purchase vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics” for prevention and treatment of the Ebola virus. That would bring the total to nearly $1.8 billion, which would be topped up with special transfer authority to pull unspent resources from other HHS accounts to get to the full request for “at least” $2.5 billion.
Speaking to reporters in India, President Donald Trump defended the request and noted his administration wasn’t letting up on Ebola prevention efforts despite taking money from prior appropriations.