RE: White House Says It Hasn’t Given Up on COVID-19 Funding3 Oct 2022 16:37
The stopgap funding agreement to keep the government open past Friday does not have the Biden administration’s requested funding for monkeypox or COVID-19. Earlier this month, the White House asked for $22.4 billion for COVID-related needs and $4.5 billion for monkeypox.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked during a briefing on Tuesday if the White House has given up on that funding? “Our near-term priority is keeping the government open -- we've been very clear about that,” she replied. “We've been very clear since early 2022 about our COVID funding needs and have warned that, without congressional action, we would be forced…to make difficult trade-offs.”
Already, there have been cuts to the testing program and “being unable to take action that Republicans and Democrats support to have the United States lead the effort on the next generation of vaccine, the next generation of treatments,” Jean-Pierre noted. “And so, we're not going to give up.”