Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer wants to more than triple the funding sought by the White House to combat the spread of the deadly coronavirus-caused disease that federal officials now say is inevitable in the U.S.
Schumer, D-N.Y., has asked appropriators to write an $8.5 billion emergency spending bill to contain and treat the COVID-19 disease.
The sum is substantially larger than the $2.5 billion the Trump administration proposed to set aside for the effort earlier this week, which Democrats panned as “woefully insufficient.” Of that amount only half would be new emergency appropriations, with the remainder siphoned from existing Department of Health and Human Services funds.
Schumer’s offer is likely Democrats’ opening salvo in negotiations that will need the support of the Republican-controlled Senate as well as President Donald Trump. It’s also substantially larger than the $3.1 billion Schumer called for on the Senate floor Tuesday, and it’s not clear House Democrats have any intention of going up that high, let alone Senate Republicans.
Schumer’s proposal would provide:
- $3 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services’ public health and social services emergency fund. The fund is designed to help prepare for and respond to public health emergencies.
- $2 billion to reimburse state and local health departments that could run out of money to monitor and address the spread of the virus.
- $1.5 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s infectious disease rapid response reserve fund and global health security accounts.
- $1 billion for the U.S. Agency for International Development emergency reserve fund to assist nations dealing with coronavirus, Ebola and other illnesses.
- $1 billion for vaccine development at the National Institutes of Health.
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Bigger than bird flu package
The request would be larger, as Schumer points out, than the $6.1 billion for avian flu preparedness and treatment Congress approved in two batches in late 2005 and 2006, or the nearly $7.7 billion appropriated in 2009 to respond to the H1N1 virus outbreak .
The figure, if approved, would also be larger than the $5.4 billion lawmakers added to the fiscal 2015 omnibus spending package to address the Ebola virus outbreak that originated in West Africa in 2014.
Lawmakers set aside an additional $535 million for Ebola vaccines and treatment measures in fiscal 2020 in response to a fresh outbreak that began in 2018. The Trump administration now wants to divert that funding to their larger $2.5 billion COVID-19 response, which Democrats have said is not only “too little, too late” but also lacks detailed information about how the money would be spent.
The Senate Democratic offer comes as appropriators in both chambers are working to draft a supplemental spending bill that could be released as early as this week. Lawmakers want to pass legislation to deal with any domestic COVID-19 outbreak before they head home March 13 for a one-week recess and hear from concerned constituents.
A House Democratic aide said “bipartisan, bicameral meetings to work out the details of the coronavirus supplemental” will start Wednesday.
“Given that we have received virtually no information from the Trump administration, we are still assessing what amount of funding is needed,” the aide continued, declining to comment on the $8.5 billion figure specifically.
Trump will continue to be the wild card, as he has been in past spending negotiations. He tweeted Wednesday morning that he plans to hold a 6 p.m. news conference to discuss coronavirus containment efforts alongside Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials.
Speaking at a House appropriations hearing Wednesday, HHS Secretary Alex Azar told panel members that the Trump administration intends to be “flexible” on the eventual package, noting the initial request called for “at least” $2.5 billion.
He reiterated that the administration was open to avoiding having to dip into money already set aside for the Ebola response, a proposal that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have registered concern with. “I don’t think we should be penny-wise and pound-foolish on that,” House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Tom Cole, R-Okla., told Azar.
Azar also said the administration would work with lawmakers on possibly adding more money during the fiscal 2021 appropriations process that’s just getting underway.
The back-and-forth over the size and scope of the COVID-19 response comes as the disease has now spread rapidly beyond China and has shaken financial markets worldwide. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 Index each fell more than 6 percent over the past two days, before rebounding slightly Wednesday morning.
Senate Republicans this week said they’d be willing to spend more money than the White House has asked for, and possibly come back later in the year to appropriate more if necessary. “It seems to me the administration’s request is lowballing it, possibly,” Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., said Tuesday.
David Lerman and Sandhya Raman contributed to this report.
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