Three Republican representatives recently forwarded correspondence to President Joe Biden seeking an accounting of existing COVID-19 funding in anticipation of the administration requesting additional dollars.
House Budget Committee Republican Leader Jason Smith (R-MO), House Energy & Commerce Committee Republican Leader Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), and House Ways & Means Committee Republican Leader Kevin Brady (R-TX) addressed concerns with the administration for its failure to account for how, when and where funding meant to address COVID-19 has been distributed and spent to date.
“American taxpayers deserve an honest and detailed accounting of where the $6 trillion in COVID-19 relief passed by Congress has been spent and how much remains,” the legislators wrote. “Your Administration has misused taxpayer dollars to spend on items unrelated to COVID-19 and repurposed funds for the southern border crisis of your own creation. The American people deserve transparency and answers to important questions from their government before being asked to further foot the bill for another attempt by your White House to spend hundreds of billions or even trillions more in the name of combatting COVID-19. A permanent pandemic narrative cannot be used by your office to avoid this responsibility.”
The letter provides a timeline of Congressional activity and funding provided for COVID-19 that includes multiple instances where Ranking Members of the House Budget Committee, House Energy & Commerce Committee, House Oversight and Reform Committee, and House Homeland Security Committee have made Biden administration requests to provide needed transparency and accountability around the use of taxpayer dollars.
“Hundreds of billions of dollars have been used to bail out state governments, and to build bike trails, new high school weight rooms, apartment buildings, and golf courses, to name just a few examples,” the legislators said.