White House, Congress blame game heats up as Covid funding stalls

There appears to be no clear strategy from either the White House or Capitol Hill to secure the funds.

The Biden administration and members of Congress are pointing fingers at one another over the stalling out of more than $15 billion in pandemic funds that are needed to continue combating Covid-19 in the U.S. and around the world.

Even as the administration warns it may need to cancel new orders of Covid-19 drugs as soon as next week and wind down access to testing soon after that, there appears to be no clear strategy from either the White House or Capitol Hill to secure the funds.

“We will leave to Congress the details of how they get this over the finish line,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters on a call Tuesday. “There’s bipartisan recognition that we need this money and that the money they provided over a year ago has been well spent, but we defer to Congress on the specific legislative approach.”

Top appropriators on Capitol Hill point the finger back at the administration, saying the White House did not make a convincing enough case for the money to win over Republicans who recently voted to declare the pandemic over and are loath to spend billions more fighting the virus.

“There's a doubt that they need this money with a lot of us,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). “I've said this for weeks, a real accounting of the money [already spent on Covid] that the American people deserve and then go from there. If there's no money left, and it's not hidden somewhere, and if they show a need, then you got, maybe, a persuasive case.”

Even Republicans who support the funding and are worried about the consequences of the money running out say the administration isn’t doing enough.

“I'm for replenishing these accounts,” stressed Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the Senate’s top Republican in charge of health care spending. “But it's their job to help make the case as to how much they need and how long it will last. I’d like to have some of those facts, so I could advocate for that amount of money in that amount of time.”

The Biden administration, meanwhile, insists it’s doing all it can to hammer home for lawmakers that failing to swiftly approve the funding will have serious consequences — particularly as cases surge again in Asia and Europe and health experts warn of a possible spring surge in the U.S.

Senior White House and administration officials said in a memo given to reporters on Tuesday that, since January, they’ve held more than three dozen calls and meetings with members of Congress in both parties, briefed congressional committees at least 10 times and sent at least a dozen letters to the Hill “to warn that funds for COVID response were running out” and “provide tables on the status of COVID funds” that Congress had already pumped out over the last two years.

But while Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised a vote on the $15 billion this week, the White House hasn’t outlined a plan for pushing it through the Senate, where they need at least 10 Republicans to support the new money.

In public and private, Biden administration officials instead have emphasized the consequences of leaving the pandemic response unfunded, hoping the tactic will ratchet up pressure on lawmakers to reach a compromise. The White House has repeatedly warned that testing capabilities are already declining, and supplies of therapeutics are on track to run out within months. On Tuesday, the administration publicized a list of programs that it may need to abruptly halt or scale back if Congress declines to fund the response, including the looming cutoff of the program that reimbursed providers for treating uninsured Covid patients.

"HHS will begin to scale back this program starting next week and end it completely in early April," a senior administration official said during the call with reporters. More concerning, the official said, would be the cancellation next week of orders of drugs to treat Covid patients. Testing will also have to wind down in the second half of this year, the official warned, as will research and development of new Covid treatments.

“Failure to invest now will leave us less prepared for future surges,” another senior official said. “Providing funding only when cases rise is far too late to make a difference.”

This approach comes amid lingering frustration with House Democrats over their decision last week to pull the Covid funding out of a broader government spending and Ukraine aid package. While federal agencies had originally argued that well over $30 billion was needed for the domestic and international response, the White House and top appropriators had worked out a deal with Senate Republicans to put $15.6 billion into the response that would be paid for in part by clawing back aid meant for states and localities.

Though the administration was wary of diverting money from states, it also concluded that it was the only way to secure additional Covid funding — and had received assurances from Democratic leaders that their members would go along with it.

But House Democrats from states that would lose the most revolted, forcing leadership to abandon the plan and the leverage that came with passing the funding as part of broader legislation. Since then, Biden officials have signaled that congressional Democrats made their own mess — and it’ll largely be up to them to clean it up.

A senior Democratic aide told POLITICO that discussions are underway in the House about making changes to the bill, with a focus on finding alternative pay-fors that would be acceptable to the Senate. The aide also stressed that they were sticking to the $15.6 billion figure even as Biden administration officials argued Tuesday that at least $22.5 billion is needed just for the short term.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said stripping the Covid funding out of the must-pass spending bill was a blow to its chances.

“Once we lost it in the House, it’ll be tough to get back,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told reporters Monday night. “I don't know if those House members deluded themselves into believing that there was some other path, but I think it's hard to find an alternative path other than in the budget.”

Groups that met with Capitol Hill leaders this week say they’re also worried there isn’t a solid plan to secure the funding.

“We asked about the likelihood of it getting bundled with restaurant aid. We asked about the timing — are we talking days or weeks? And we literally just got a bunch of ‘we don’t knows,’” one health advocate close to the talks who was granted anonymity to speak about private conversations told POLITICO. “All we got was them telling us: ‘Keep telling folks that Covid isn’t over.’”