Republicans balked at the Biden administration’s request for billions more in pandemic funding, citing a lack of transparency to show Congress how the trillions of dollars already allocated to address COVID-19 have been spent.
The U.S. government has used about $5 trillion in pandemic relief out of about $5.7 trillion in total aid appropriated by Congress since the onset of the pandemic. So far, slightly over $3.6 trillion has been paid out to recipients such as the Small Business Administration, which oversees the Paycheck Protection Program established in April 2020.
The White House Office of Management and Budget will need an additional $22.5 billion to address “immediate needs” meant to “avoid disruption to ongoing COVID response efforts over the next few months.”
But lawmakers on the Right, such as Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, have said the White House’s request is essentially a nonstarter until it is able to detail exactly how the trillions of dollars in pandemic relief has been spent.
“Before Democrats spend billions more and risk driving prices even higher, the Biden administration must provide a detailed breakdown of how the federal government has disbursed the $6 trillion Congress already approved to fight the pandemic,” Grassley told the Washington Examiner.
Republicans have outlined their demands for more transparency in a letter sent to the White House last week. Thirty-six GOP senators signed on to demand that the administration provide them with an itemized list of expenditures pertaining to vaccines and testing and exactly how much funding from myriad congressional appropriations remains unspent or unallocated.
“The request that my colleagues and I sent to the president is not overly burdensome — it is common sense. If we are to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollars that the people of Wyoming and the rest of the country have sent us, then we must make sure that money is being spent appropriately,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican.
While members of Congress have said the aid was necessary to keep the U.S. from plummeting into a financial depression, the early race to blunt the toll of the pandemic on the economy opened the door for confusion and widespread misuse of funds.
The Small Business Administration, which oversaw the dispensation of forgivable loans to small businesses in order for them to keep on employees, reported it had received more than 845,000 applications for aid believed to have come from people using stolen identities. Even while the SBA flagged the suspected fraud to the Office of Inspector General, it still paid out $6.2 billion in loan funds and $468 million in advance grants to these applicants.
“If improper use of funds has occurred, the public deserves to know, and no more funds should be appropriated until we have addressed these concerns. Worrying about the pandemic is one thing, but having to worry that the government is not spending COVID-19 funds carefully is absurd,” Lummis said.
The White House has nearly run through the $1.9 trillion allocated for the research and development of vaccines and therapies in the American Rescue Plan passed soon after President Joe Biden took office, an administration official told the Washington Examiner. The staggering price tag made this one of the largest stimulus packages ever passed through Congress.
“With inflation at a record high and gas prices soaring, tell us how you spent the last $1.9 trillion before you expect us to give you more,” said Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy.
The administration said it needs the additional funding to secure more doses of antiviral treatments such as Pfizer’s Paxlovid, a course of pills that reduces the risk of hospitalization due to severe illness by about 90% as long as they’re taken early on in the infection. Supply constraints mean that not everyone who could benefit from the pills can get them, though. The Biden administration has purchased 20 million courses of the treatment, though only a fraction of that total will be available to patients in the next two months.
The pandemic has shown signs of receding in recent weeks, so much so that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed its masking recommendations, giving most people the option to go without face coverings. Despite the waning pandemic, surges due to new variants are bound to arise, and with them will come increased need for tests and treatments.
The additional billions in funding will be necessary to secure "immediately" supplies of oral antiviral treatments, to shore up the nation’s testing capacity, develop a vaccine that works against variants, and accelerate efforts to vaccinate other countries. The White House did not further specify how the money should be spent.
“Before even considering this additional funding request … we also need to know their specific plans for how this additional money would be spent, accounted for, appropriated, and just as important, why it is necessary,” said West Virginia Republican Shelley Moore Capito.