The U.S. Congress authorized spending $9 billion on funding an initial two-shot vaccine and a booster shot for all Americans. But now, as the pharmaceutical companies are telling Congress that another booster will be needed, the administration is pleading poverty.
“We do have sufficient current inventory of vaccines, both at states and pharmacies and other access points around the country and in our central inventory for fourth doses if they’re called for this spring for our most vulnerable, including seniors,” Biden COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said.
“Where we do not have sufficient doses is later in the year if the science dictates that all Americans should get a booster, or if there’s a need for a new formulation of the vaccine, a variant-specific vaccine,” Zeints said.
So, has the government spent all $5.1 trillion authorized by Congress for COVID relief funding? Not exactly. There’s an unknown amount of that money still in the pipeline that’s unspent.
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Ninety-three percent of the remaining money from the American Rescue Plan passed last year has been “obligated or distributed to specific grantees or groups, including states and localities,” according to the Biden administration.
Just because that money has been “obligated” doesn’t mean it has already been spent. In fact, Congress has redirected funds from pandemic relief before. The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill contained only about $550 billion in new spending. There was $13 billion in “repurposed” pandemic relief spending in the bill — monies that were already appropriated that were found to be unnecessary for the purpose they were supposed to fund.
But instead of looking for cash in the $5 trillion that’s already been appropriated, Biden wants brand new spending authorized for a shot that most Americans won’t even need.
Other top public health officials made similar warnings as the administration continued to urgently advocate for funding.
Fauci warned that the US “will not be able to continue to make these purchases” of monoclonal antibody treatments without continued funding.
The more the public health bureaucrats bleat, the less credibility they have.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called continued funding “critical.”
“If cases rise from the Omicron variant or any other variant, we have the tools — vaccines, boosters, tests and therapeutics to be prepared — but continued investment in these tools so that they are readily available when we need them remains critical,” she said. “From a public health standpoint, it is critical that we continue to provide people with the tools to keep them, their families, and their communities safe.”
Zients also warned that “failure to invest now will leave us with insufficient testing capacity and supply,” calling the consequences of congressional inaction “severe” and “immediate.”
Severe! Immediate! Critical! — all the buzzwords of the pandemic that opened the spigot of federal spending the last two years.
When are we going to declare a halt to these painfully obvious scare tactics? If the bureaucrats can’t make their case without using scare tactics, it probably isn’t a very good case.
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