Federal COVID aid may be coming to an end

The Biden administration asked Congress for $22.5 billion for COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines in early March. But two bipartisan agreements - the first for $15 billion and the second for $10 billion - have not made it to the floor for votes.

The first bill was pulled from a much larger government funding package after several Democrats raised concerns it would have yanked back money Congress previously approved for states to address COVID-19.

The second bipartisan measure stalled after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said the bill could only advance if Democrats agreed to hold an amendment vote on a separate immigration issue known as Title 42. Negotiations on some sort of COVID-19 package had briefly started anew, though talks have since stalled.

As the stalemate has dragged on, infections throughout the country have steadily increased and Americans traveling for summer vacations will likely exacerbate case counts and hospitalizations.

The seven-day average of cases was around 48, 000 in early March when Biden asked lawmakers to provide more funding, but it has increased to more than 109, 000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hospitalizations averaged 3, 700 a day in early March before dropping to a low of 1, 200 in April. But those numbers have picked back up to 4, 400, according to the CDC.

If Congress can't reach an agreement in the coming weeks on another round of funding, the federal government is unlikely to continue programs past the fall, according to White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha.

Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt said Tuesday that neither he nor North Carolina GOP Sen. Richard Burr, two key negotiators on coronavirus spending, have heard from the White House in a couple of weeks on COVID-19 funding.

While he supports providing more resources, Blunt said, the Biden administration erred when it asked Congress to provide billions more for COVID-19 while it moved to end Title 42.

That Trump-era public health declaration from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed border officials to turn away migrants, including asylum seekers, trying to cross the Southwestern border.

The Biden administration tried to end the program in late May, but a lawsuit from several Republican states has kept the program in place.

"This is a self-inflicted problem that the administration created, and they're gonna have to figure out a way around it," Blunt said. "One way around it would have been not to appeal the judge's decision, but they missed that one."

Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro, chair of the House committee that oversees federal spending, didn't dispute that negotiations have stalled.

When asked what could get negotiators in a room again, De-Lauro said: "I would think the moral imperative since we're running out of product would be good enough, but it doesn't appear to be."