The federal government is running out of money for life-saving COVID-19 treatments, COVID-19 tests for the uninsured, and booster vaccines. At least, that’s the latest scare story out of the Biden administration.
Is the Federal Government Running Out of Money for Crucial COVID Treatments?
The White House is asking Congress for more money and sounding the alarm over a looming COVID disaster if they aren’t given more taxpayer funds.
“The funds Congress provided for COVID response are dwindling,” the White House wrote in a recent letter to Congress. The administration says that if it isn’t given billions more in funding as requested, this will mean “no additional purchases of monoclonal antibodies sent to states, fewer tests made in America, fewer treatments for the immune compromised, and a risk of running short on vaccines.”
This is leading to predictably-panicked social media commentary and media headlines:
The United States is poised to run out of tests, treatments and vaccines to fight coronavirus after a $15.6 billion funding plan collapsed in Congress. https://t.co/4RYTC2fjKy
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 11, 2022
Next week, the White House will start winding down a COVID program that pays to test, treat and vaccinate people without health insurance.
The Biden administration asked for more money from Congress, but that hasn't happened.https://t.co/WcfF6enXc2
— NPR (@NPR) March 15, 2022
So what’s the deal here? Is Congress really so stingy with taxpayer money that the Biden administration can’t afford COVID tests for the uninsured?
Suffice it to say there’s… a lot more to the story here.
The Feds Have Already Wasted Trillions That Could’ve Been Used For This
The most glaring fact here—conveniently left out of most mainstream media coverage—is that the Biden administration worked with Congress to pass a $1.9 trillion “COVID” spending bill just last year. That’s right: They’ve already spent roughly $13,250 per federal taxpayer. And, if you count the COVID spending from before Biden took office, the federal government has spent an astounding $6 trillion on supposed “COVID relief.”
Where did all the money go?
Well, as some of us warned at the time, most of that bill’s spending had nothing to do with addressing the health crisis. For example, it funneled $350 billion in a wholly unnecessary bailout to state and local governments and gave $120 billion to public schools whether they opened or not. In contrast, it only spent about $20 billion on vaccines.
How’s that for warped priorities? Even the left-leaning fact-checker PolitiFact acknowledged that only, at absolute most, 8.5% of Biden’s big “COVID” bill went to directly address the pandemic. Yup: more than 90% was just partisan spending priorities and corrupt pet projects.
It’s all a complete joke.
Don’t Fall For This Scare Tactic
The Biden administration and Congress have no right to squeeze tens of billions more out of taxpayers (and future generations) after wasting and misallocating trillions in the name of “COVID” relief. If they’re actually out of money for truly essential health spending, they always have the option to re-allocate some of the money from the massive spending bill. (Hundreds of billions haven’t actually been spent yet.)
But they’d rather just scare us, and dangle the prospect of hypothetical Americans failing to receive crucial COVID-19 care so we open up our wallets yet again.
Don’t fall for the media alarmism and political spin. If the federal government actually runs out of money for life-saving COVID resources, that will be a choice it has made—not evidence of a shortage of taxpayer dollars at its disposal.