Biden proposes emergency legislation amidst pandemic funding shortfall

Speaking Security Newsletter | Note n°172 | 8 September 2022

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Situation

At the top of Congress’ September agenda is taking up the $47.1 billion emergency funding request Joe Biden submitted to Congress on Friday of last week. The biggest chunk—$22.4 billion—is for pandemic-related programs, including for the (now-suspended) one that delivers free at-home testing kits to US households.

The White House has been warning of an eventual pandemic funding shortfall since March, but it still hasn’t secured the necessary public health funding (for vaccine research, procurement, distribution, testing, etc.) for even the faintest response to the impending surge. This is not what responsible governance looks like.

Sharyn Blum @sleepyknave

And there it is. We're on our own.

Will the emergency funding bill pass?

Yes, the bill will pass. Whether it includes pandemic funding is another question, though.

Lumped into Biden’s proposal is $13.7 billion for Ukraine-related spending, most of which ($7.2 billion) is for military programs. Theoretically, this gives the pandemic provisions a better shot at getting through Congress: Sending weapons to Ukraine is a much more popular idea among members of Congress than maintaining some semblance of a federal pandemic response. This is why Biden submitted one and not separate funding requests—the thinking is that lawmakers will tolerate the public health component if it means getting more money for arms transfers.

Will this tactic work? We should know already: Biden bundled pandemic funding with Ukraine aid twice before. But each time, he quickly abandoned this tactic—thereby giving up the leverage needed to pass the public health provisions—in order to expedite military aid to Ukraine. 

On March 2, Biden requested $32.5 billion in emergency spending from Congress, including $22.5 billion for COVID and $10 billion for Ukraine aid. The legislation Congress sent to his desk contained $13.6 billion for Ukraine and $0 for COVID, after Speaker Pelosi cut all funding for the latter. Biden signed it into law anyway on March 15. The same day, the White House released a statement warning that its pandemic programs are running out of money.

On April 28, Biden requested another emergency supplemental funding bill, this time worth $55.5 billion; $22.5 billion for COVID and $33 billion for Ukraine. On May 9—a couple days after the White House said it expects 100 million coronavirus infections and a significant wave of related deaths in the fall and winter—Biden instructed Congress to strip the pandemic funding from the bill because it “would slow down action on the urgently needed Ukrainian aid.” The bill he signed into law on May 21 contained $40.1 billion for Ukraine and $0 for COVID.

This tactic will fail a third time unless Biden has truly elevated the pandemic to a top priority. He’s left plenty of doubt as to whether he has.

-Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)

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