White House supports increasing pandemic prevention funding amid worries Congress will shortchange the effort

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Fri, 2021-09-03 11:22 — mike kraft

White House joins push to beef up pandemic prevention funding amid worries Congress will shortchange the effort The Biden administration wants Congress to provide at least $15 billion in pandemic prevention funding in the pending economic bill — dollars that might have to be diverted from other administration priorities. Mike DeBonis Washington Post

The fight to prevent the next pandemic is underway on Capitol Hill even as the coronavirus continues to ravage the nation, with the Biden administration joining a quiet but consequential battle to secure tens of billions of dollars in funding aimed at readying vaccines, tests, treatments and surveillance for future global health threats.

While the amount of funding in play pales next to the overall scale of the planned $3.5 trillion economic package that Democrats hope to push through Congress in the coming week, advocates are arguing that the stakes are high: Without at least $30 billion of federal investment, they say, the nation could be left vulnerable to a devastating repeat of the covid crisis, or worse.

But a budget blueprint adopted by Congress last month envisions delivering only a fraction of that total — less than $10 billion — which some are warning would squander an important opportunity while Washington and the world are focused on the threat posed by pandemics.

The White House in recent days has circulated a memo to key congressional leaders arguing for the pending bill to provide at least $15 billion in pandemic prevention funding — dollars that might have to be diverted from other administration priorities. Even that amount, the memo says, would only provide a “jump-start” to an estimated $65 billion effort needed in the coming decade to prepare vaccines, therapies and tests that can be quickly scaled to blunt emerging disease threats. ...

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