U.S. Senators Near Deal on Smaller Bill to Fund Covid-19 Fight

(Bloomberg) -- Democrats and Republicans are near agreement on a $10 billion Covid-19 funding package as the White House mounts a last-ditch effort to salvage money for global vaccine efforts that had been championed by President Joe Biden. 

Utah Senator Mitt Romney, the top GOP negotiator on the bill, said Thursday afternoon that there is an agreement in principle but that Republicans are awaiting a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. 

Romney said $1 billion in global vaccine funding could be added but only if other funding is cut to keep the total at $10 billion. The bill, he said, would be fully paid for, including by using unspent money previously allocated to aid businesses. 

The White House's requested $5 billion allotment for global vaccine efforts has been mired in disputes over how to pay for it and appeared almost certain to be dropped from the bill to attract GOP support. Senator Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, has said that Congress would likely process another Covid bill within two months and return to that issue. 

Senior administration officials have not given up on the global vaccine funding and were working the phones Wednesday night and into Thursday as negotiators tried to finalize a deal, a personal familiar with the talks said. And some Democrats are threatening to vote against the bill in the House if it doesn't include the global vaccine funding. 

“If the Senate does this, I am concerned many others and I may not be able to support the bill,” Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, tweeted on Thursday. “We can't end the pandemic without global vax funding -- period.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the shrunken package “shameful,” but a person familiar with her position said she isn't threatening to block the bill. “We have said, we have pronounced, everyone knows, none of us safe unless all of us are safe,” Pelosi told reporters. 

Despite the dispute over the funding for overseas vaccines, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor a deal was within reach, acknowledging his constraints in a 50-50 Senate where 60 votes are needed to pass most legislation. 

“The gap has been narrowed greatly, and we're intent on working with Republicans to cross the finish line,” he said.

The emerging agreement would be much smaller than the $22.5 billion Biden requested in early March and smaller than a $15.6 billion package that was stripped out of the annual 2022 government budget bill as a result of objections from some Democrats to using money from an earlier rescue package targeted to state and local government aid. 

Earlier: Biden Urges Congress to Provide More Money to Curb Covid-19

House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro stressed the need for the funds for the U.S. Agency for International Development to combat the pandemic outside the U.S. “No amount of domestic preparedness can continue with an onslaught of new variants,” the Connecticut Democrat said. 

The money in the emerging Senate deal is to be used for purchasing existing vaccines and developing new ones, purchasing treatments and covering patient costs as the coronavirus, while waning, continues to infect thousands of Americans every day. 

The Senate scrapped the first in a series of procedural votes planned Thursday, which would have set up a final vote on the Covid bill early next week. The House aims to send the bill to Biden to become law before Congress departs on a two-week recess at the end of next week. 

The Biden administration has cautioned that existing funds have virtually all been spent or allocated -- and that supplies have started to run out. 

A program for testing and treating the uninsured has stopped taking new claims, and the deal wouldn't restore that; shipments of monoclonal antibodies have been clawed back and are poised to end; testing capacity could fall in summer without government subsidies to keep it going; and new antiviral pills will only be shipped until September.

“The consequences of inaction are severe, they'll only grow with time,” Biden told reporters on Wednesday. “It doesn't have to be that way.”

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