Biden’s spending bill cuts funds for pandemic response, increases funds for the Pentagon
Speaking Security Newsletter | Advisory Note for Activists and Candidates, n°149 | 23 March 2022
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Situation
Earlier this month, the Biden administration laid out a $22.5 billion pandemic response plan to deal with the projected increase in Covid-19 cases due to the emergence of a new, nasty subvariant. To get this plan funded, Democrats stuck it to the FY2022 omnibus spending bill as a supplemental provision. However, after some Republicans made a fuss, Speaker Pelosi eventually stripped the emergency Covid-19 funds from the omnibus bill in order to expedite its passage.
Even though Biden’s pandemic response funds were scrapped from the omnibus legislation, Biden still signed the thing on March 15. The same day, the White House released a statement warning that its Covid-19 programs will run out of money without the $22.5 billion Biden proposed (and which Biden was fine with leaving out of the omnibus bill).
Pelosi promised to deliver a standalone version of Biden’s pandemic response legislation, but without being fastened to a more popular piece of legislation—like an omnibus spending bill—the replacement Covid funding bill Pelosi’s talking about is unlikely to materialize in the near term, if at all (a fact both Pelosi and Biden must’ve known). Put simply, Biden’s approval of the omnibus bill made securing much-needed Covid funding a lot more difficult.
Analysis
By signing the omnibus legislation into law, Biden delivered Republicans two major victories. The first was making the Biden administration look incompetent. Mission accomplished: Despite Biden’s omnibus legislation being a gargantuan, $1.5 trillion spending bill, it somehow managed to omit adequate funding for the pandemic—one of the most urgent and obvious threats facing the US (and global) public.
The second victory for Republicans was Biden’s endorsement of what effectively amounts to a Republican spending plan. Just like Trump’s last omnibus, 52% of the funding in Biden’s omnibus goes to the Pentagon. Biden’s bill is larger, but is able to maintain the Pentagon’s majority share of the discretionary budget by increasing military spending to $782 billion—excluding several billions in supplemental military aid provided to Ukraine—tens of billions more than the amount proposed in Biden’s budget request.
All told, the omnibus bill Biden signed into law had $22.5 billion less than what he requested for pandemic response, and $29 billion more than Biden requested for the Pentagon. The last military budget with that large of a congressionally-proposed increase was the FY2018 budget, back when it was the Republicans who held the federal government trifecta.
*RECOMMENDED READING: I referred to Branko Marcetic’s recent analysis more than once while writing this note and would recommend checking out Marcetic’s article, here.*
-Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)
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