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The Trump administration is seeking to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
The administration is also trying to block billions of dollars that GOP senators want to provide for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and billions more for the Pentagon and State Department to address the pandemic at home and abroad, sources told The Post.
The report also comes as the United States broke its record of daily new cases for the 11th time in July on Thursday.
The officials, who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity to reveal confidential discussions, cautioned that talks were still underway and that numbers had not yet been finalized.
The negotiations focus on a bill Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is expected to bring before Congress next week as part of negotiations with Democrats on what will likely be the last major coronavirus relief bill before the November election.
Congressional negotiations are expected to unfold with added urgency due to the surge of cases and climbing death toll in the United State. The disagreement, however, between Trump administration officials and Senate Republicans who are at odds about money for testing and other priorities is creating a major bottleneck before those talks get started.
One person involved in the talks told The Post that Senate Republicans were seeking to allocate $25 billion for states to conduct testing and contact tracing, but that certain administration officials want to zero out the testing and tracing money entirely. According to the report, many White House officials argue that some of that money remains unspent since the last major coronavirus spending bill Congress was approved in April which included $25 billion to increase testing
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...-contact-tracing-and-cdc-in-covid-relief-bill
The administration is also trying to block billions of dollars that GOP senators want to provide for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and billions more for the Pentagon and State Department to address the pandemic at home and abroad, sources told The Post.
The report also comes as the United States broke its record of daily new cases for the 11th time in July on Thursday.
The officials, who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity to reveal confidential discussions, cautioned that talks were still underway and that numbers had not yet been finalized.
The negotiations focus on a bill Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is expected to bring before Congress next week as part of negotiations with Democrats on what will likely be the last major coronavirus relief bill before the November election.
Congressional negotiations are expected to unfold with added urgency due to the surge of cases and climbing death toll in the United State. The disagreement, however, between Trump administration officials and Senate Republicans who are at odds about money for testing and other priorities is creating a major bottleneck before those talks get started.
One person involved in the talks told The Post that Senate Republicans were seeking to allocate $25 billion for states to conduct testing and contact tracing, but that certain administration officials want to zero out the testing and tracing money entirely. According to the report, many White House officials argue that some of that money remains unspent since the last major coronavirus spending bill Congress was approved in April which included $25 billion to increase testing
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...-contact-tracing-and-cdc-in-covid-relief-bill