Bipartisan negotiators struck a $10 billion Senate deal Monday to handle COVID-19 that is less than half the amount that President Biden demanded last month.
The smaller aid package also does not include the global funding Mr. Biden wanted to make the U.S. the toolbox of vaccines for poorer nations.
Nonetheless, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said the package will give the administration a critical injection of funds to maintain testing capacity and purchase treatments and vaccines. He said Democrats will seek more taxpayer dollars for global efforts later this spring.
“This $10 billion COVID package will give the federal government — and our citizens — the tools we need to continue our economic recovery, keep schools open and keep American families safe,” said Mr. Schumer, New York Democrat.
The White House said the president is ready to sign the deal if it makes it through the evenly divided Senate and Democrat-controlled House, even though it is far short of the $22 billion he wanted.
The administration in recent days suggested it would take what it could get from Congress, as it ran out of funding to reimburse health providers and purchase booster shots that might be needed later this year.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra recently said his agency had to slash its federal shipments of monoclonal antibodies by 35% and some labs said they can no longer offer free testing to the uninsured because federal funding is running out.
The funding in the bipartisan deal will flow to DHHS’ biomedical arm. While the agency will have some discretion over how the money is used, no less than $5 billion must be used to develop and manufacture treatments for COVID-19 and $750 million must be devoted to researching new variants and vaccines for the virus.
Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the lead Republican negotiator, said his side should be satisfied because the deal funds the pandemic fight by shifting existing funds instead of authorizing new spending.
Democrats balked at touching a specific bucket of state funds that have been allocated in stages and written into state budget plans, so negotiators searched the couch cushions for other offsets, including aid for small businesses, agriculture and the aviation sector.
“Importantly, this bill is comprised of dollar-for-dollar offsets and will not cost the American people a single additional dollar,” Mr. Romney said.
While that might satisfy the Senate, members of the Democrat-controlled House signaled their discomfort with the lack of funding for global aid. Some said they would reject a package that doesn’t include it, meaning House leaders might have to rally the necessary votes if GOP lawmakers don’t make up for any defectors.
“I’d rather stop the next COVID variant in Africa or Asia than have to fight it again in New Jersey,” Rep. Tom Malinowski, New Jersey Democrat, tweeted last week.
The U.S. plays an outsized role in supporting the global pandemic fight. It has provided $4 billion to COVAX, the global vaccine-sharing program, meaning it accounted for 36% of its funding, according to a March analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Roughly 15% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 80% in wealthier countries, according to Our World in Data. Some public health experts say the U.S. will pay more later if it doesn’t do more to stiff-arm variants abroad.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the deal a down payment on Mr. Biden’s $22 billion plan to spend at home and abroad.
“There are a wide number of Republicans who have called for funding for — and called for ensuring — we continue to be the arsenal of vaccine distribution around the world,” she said.
Republicans say the Democrats only have themselves to blame for the slimmed-down package. Lawmakers are debating a standalone package after some House Democrats objected to reeling in $7 billion from Mr. Biden’s 2021 virus package — the American Rescue Plan — that had been set aside for state governments.
Dollars are still filtering out, and some states received funding before others, so lawmakers said some states would be disadvantaged by rescinding some of the money.
Experts say there is no practical or fair way to claw back the funds since some states have two-year budgets and allocated half for one year with the expectation they’d get the rest for the following year.
“The original sin here is states are doing bad things with their money because we gave them too much money. We shouldn’t surprised they’re using it for all kinds of stupid stuff,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “We spent too much money on cutting checks and money that states didn’t need, and not enough on treatments that people need, that seems backward to me.”
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a progressive think tank, said as of December 2021, 43 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico had appropriated $115 billion, or 58%, of the $198 billion set aside for them.
CBPP said Florida devoted $2 billion of its Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds — 23% — to highway construction.
Other states, including Colorado, Louisiana and Washington, devoted a large share of their allocations to transportation projects, raising questions about whether all the funds were spent within the spirit of Treasury regulations around the rescue law.
Alabama is using $400 million, or about 20% of its allocation, to build two large prisons, while Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is doling out checks for water projects.
Republicans who are uncomfortable with new spending have repeatedly pointed to potentially frivolous spending from last year’s package, which Democrats passed without GOP support.
Rep. Tom Cole, Oklahoma Republican and member of the House Appropriations Committee, told Mr. Becerra last week he wants to sustain the COVID-19 fight but he’s skittish about the flow of dollars.
“I don’t want to get behind the eight ball here,” he said, “but I also don’t want to just say it’s OK to send money out willy-nilly to states that are supposed to be for COVID and it’s not being used that way in many areas.”
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.