Political battles over the response to COVID-19 are here to stay, the latest example being a partisan fight over how to pay for additional relief funds that will go toward testing, vaccines, treatments, and research and development.
The White House is asking Congress to approve $15.6 billion in new COVID-19 spending, making the case in a March 3 document titled"Meeting Urgent Needs," and the Biden administration and congressional Democrats have been making the case since.“For months, we have been engaging Congress about our needs for additional COVID response funds,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
Much of the money already approved has been committed for other purposes or cannot easily be repurposed, argues Marc Goldwein, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's senior director of policy. That doesn't mean Congress needs to approve new spending to fight the virus. “I think we need all the money that we can get to have the resources that we need to fight COVID,” Pelosi said. “The last thing we need is another variant. The resources that we would have had in the bill, I think, need to be enhanced.”