A timeline of Biden punting on pandemic relief
Speaking Security Newsletter | Note n°187 | 20 December 2022
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Situation
The text of the FY2023 omnibus bill for FY2023—the legislation that’ll fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year—came out this morning. I’m still going through it. But what’s clear is that the supplemental funding package for COVID and other pandemic-related programs wasn’t included as a rider to the bill. Biden requested these funds in November.
This is Biden’s fourth failed attempt at securing emergency pandemic relief this year. A timeline:
Analysis
Blame Republicans, sure, however GOP obstructionism doesn’t explain these repeated failures. Democrats could have secured this funding on any one of these occasions. But the Biden administration decided that COVID would no longer be a priority in 2022. Only because of a spike in cases and public pressure did they resurrect the popular program that ships tests through USPS. Act soon: the money for it is pretty much dried up and because of this latest failure (and the three before it), there’s no more on the way.
Related reading
-Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)
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