Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Need To Support Biden Administration’s Supplemental Funding Request To Continue Our COVID Response

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding President Biden’s request for Congress to include an additional $22.5 billion for COVID relief funding in the upcoming government funding bill. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

As spring begins, daily new cases of COVID-19 have dramatically decreased since the height of omicron. Hospitalizations, thank God, are steadily declining. Across the country, Americans are able to remove their masks as the spread of the disease seems to be lessening.

Crucially, schools are open and we need to do everything we can in our power to make sure they stay open.

All of these signs point in a positive direction: the country is turning the corner on the COVID pandemic. We are in a new moment of the fight.

But we are also at a crossroads. Either we act now to secure the progress we have made, or we risk backsliding if another contagious variant emerges in the fall and winter. Just as we cannot allow COVID to rule our lives, neither can we fall into a false sense of complacency.

That’s why the White House has requested that Congress include $22.5 billion in additional COVID relief funding in the upcoming spending bill, and Congress should follow through with this request over the coming days, if not we risk sliding back if another variant occurs.

This morning on CNBC, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb reminded viewers of a key aspect of this disease: to paraphrase him loosely, cases can drop in the spring and summer, but the risk still exists for another wave to surge in the fall or winter.

He’s right, we all know this from sad experience.

We also know what we must do to be ready. We know a lot more now what to do to be ready than we knew a year ago.

If we want to keep our schools open, if we want to keep life as close to normal as possible, if we want to be ready for the possibilities of future variants, Congress must provide the resources needed before a new variant arrives. That’s the surest way to minimize cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the future.

Let me repeat: to keep schools open, to keep life as normal as it can be, we need additional COVID investments now, not after a possible new variant arises. Remember, by now all the public health funding provided under the American Rescue Plan has run out.

If Congress waits until the new variant arises to pass new funding, it will be too late.

And we are happy to make clear with our Republicans colleagues about how this money is dedicated. The White House has already provided an explanation about how COVID money has been spent over time. Some Republicans may think it should have been spent differently, but the point is that it has been spent. We can’t pull those dollars back. And we need to provide new funding for possible variants.

Where has the COVID money been spent thus far?

It’s gone to vaccinate 215 million Americans.

It’s been used to help keep schools open, to expand treatments, and to provide 1.2 billion vaccines to other countries.

And last night, Acting OMB Director Shalanda Young sent Congress a 12-page letter detailing what the new funding would do: more vaccines for children, bolstering our testing supply chain, therapeutics, and more.

If there is one thing both parties should be able to agree on, it’s that we should not short change the American people on vaccines, on testing, or on therapeutic medicines that greatly reduce the severity of the illness, if you're able to take them, if we have the supply. 

So again: Congress must include new funding for COVID relief to assure our schools and our communities face minimal disruption in case another variant comes, and we should do it ASAP.

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