WASHINGTON — Senate negotiators have reached agreement on a $10 billion pandemic relief package that includes funding for domestic needs but not international aid, according to two Senate aides who were not authorized to speak publicly.
The deal crystallizes an informal “agreement in principle” the parties reached last week to provide $10 billion for near-term pandemic needs by repurposing unspent funds from prior relief laws.
Senators left town last week undecided on whether to use $1 billion of the $10 billion for international aid to help increase the global vaccination rate or to spend it all on domestic needs. The final deal would give all $10 billion to the Department of Health and Human Services for domestic needs like buying additional therapeutics, testing supplies and vaccines.
The agreement falls short of an initial $15.6 billion leaders agreed to in negotiations over the fiscal 2022 omnibus. That agreement fell apart after a group of rank-and-file House Democrats objected to one of the offsets, $7 billion that would have been pulled from aid promised to states.
Democrats and Republicans could not agree on enough offsets to keep the spending total at $15.6 billion, which was already short of the $22.5 billion the White House requested.
The original $15.6 billion agreement included $5 billion for the U.S. Agency for International Development to send COVID-19 supplies internationally. While most of the foreign assistance funding was slated to provide vaccines to other countries to help increase global vaccination rates, it also included funding to help vulnerable populations with supplies needed to fight the virus, including therapeutics, personal protective equipment, oxygen, food and clean water.
The decision not to include any international aid will undoubtedly anger some Democrats and could cause problems for passing the supplemental bill in the House.
“I don’t think it could pass the House without any international funding,” Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., said in an interview Friday. “That’s not a decision not to increase our international efforts. That’s a decision to shut down our international efforts because USAID is out of money. We are already not doing our fair share internationally based on our size and income.”
Senators are expected to attach the COVID-19 funding after stripping the contents of the underlying shell vehicle, a leftover State-Foreign Operations spending bill that the House passed last year before it became a moot point in fiscal 2022 omnibus negotiations.
The chamber has a full plate this week with a Supreme Court confirmation debate as well as other pending business. There’s also a push on both sides of the Capitol to attach an aid package for restaurants and other consumer-facing industries hit hard by the pandemic, such as hotels, gyms and theaters.
The House is currently scheduled to take up a $55 billion package of business aid later this week, though there’s a bipartisan effort in the Senate to secure a vote on a similar package as an amendment to the supplemental.
Niels Lesniewski contributed to this report.
