By Doug Sword

CQ-Roll Call

Trump administration officials told senators at a closed briefing Tuesday morning that the White House’s request to spend $2.5 billion to combat the deadly coronavirus disease outbreak was just the beginning, with more needed as early as this fall.

Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said the first tranche of funding, submitted to Capitol Hill Monday night for review, would finance efforts to contain the COVID-19 disease through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

At that point, according to Blunt and Bill Cassidy, R-La., the White House would seek additional funding, possibly as part of a stopgap funding bill, full-year fiscal 2021 appropriations package or both.

“It seems to me the administration’s request is low-balling it, possibly,” Appropriations Chairman Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., told Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar at a Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee hearing. “If you low-ball something like this, you’ll pay for it later.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York took to the floor Tuesday to call for at least $3.1 billion upfront, including more reimbursements to state and local health officials and to avoid cutting other programs. Schumer said the new White House request was tantamount to “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

At the early morning briefing, senators heard from several administration officials, including from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, departments of State and Homeland Security and the Office of Management and Budget. Attendees said the administration envisions spending $1.5 billion of the requested money on vaccine development in fiscal 2020 alone, with more likely needed down the road.

“We’re playing catch-up and we still don’t have full access” to information from the Chinese government about the extent of the COVID-19 problem, according to Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md.

“The bad news is this is a very aggressive virus,” said Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., also a senior appropriator. Alexander said lawmakers would act to provide additional funds but he wasn’t sure if $2.5 billion was sufficient. “If it’s not enough, we’ll appropriate more,” he said.

Democrats have already blasted the administration proposal as falling short of what’s needed. Only $1.25 billion of the request would be new funding designated as an emergency, with the remainder pulled from unspent funds previously appropriated for other purposes.

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told reporters that fulfilling the supplemental request wouldn’t be an issue, but argued money wouldn’t solve everything.

“You can throw money at a problem, but you can’t produce more doctors and nurses overnight, you can’t all of a sudden produce more masks,” he said.

“There will be more than enough funding. Funding is not going to be an issue,” he said. “The administration will have enough money to address this, but you still don’t want to throw money at the problem.”

Johnson said the funding request came now because of growing concerns about the virus’s spread outside of China, in countries like Italy and Iran. “It’s pretty obvious that we’re going to get cases here in America, spread from not only China but other places, so we need to be prepared to mitigate,” he said.

Johnson and other lawmakers also raised concerns about the medical product supply chain, including for prescription drugs and their ingredients. Johnson said this should prompt Congress to act on ways to bring more drug and medical supply manufacturing back to the United States.

“We need to learn from this and we need to do things legislatively to prepare for the next case,” he said.

Speaking separately at a budget hearing Tuesday, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the threat from the coronavirus inside the U.S. remains “relatively low.” Currently, at least 14 U.S. cases have been identified, he said, along with 20 or 30 individuals repatriated from cruise ships. “We anticipate those numbers to grow in the U.S.,” Wolf said.

Airports, seaports and land ports of entry have medical screening stations in place to curb the threat, Wolf said at a Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee hearing.

“The department feels very comfortable with the measures we’ve put in place,” he said, while adding that the agency “will likely have to move some money around this year.”