WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators stated Thursday they’ve “reached an agreement in principle” on a Covid aid package they assume will garner sufficient Republican help to make it via the Senate.
The $10 billion funding proposal follows days of intense talks and is about $5 billion lower than what was being mentioned earlier this week. The eventual laws is anticipated to attract from beforehand allotted Covid aid, that means it will not consist of recent spending.
“We’ve reached an agreement in principle on all the spending and all of the offsets,” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, the lead negotiator for the GOP, instructed reporters after huddling on the Senate flooring with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “It’s entirely balanced by offsets, but we just haven’t got it drafted up yet.”
The full particulars haven’t been launched, however Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., stated that half of the package can be designated for therapeutics and the opposite half would come with “a lot of discretion in broad categories” for the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, together with analysis.
Romney, Blunt and Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., stated they believed greater than 10 GOP senators would vote for the proposal. Days earlier, Romney stated he hadn’t but secured the help of 9 different Republican senators who can be wanted to clear the 60-vote threshold for laws in the Senate, assuming all 50 Democrats again the slimmed-down measure.
Schumer stated Thursday he would postpone a beforehand scheduled vote to permit extra time to finalize particulars of the proposal.
“As a sign of good faith and to encourage us to come to a final agreement, I will reschedule today’s procedural vote to a later time,” he stated on the Senate flooring. “Now, when it comes to replenishing Covid response funding, we simply cannot afford to kick the can down the road. We need more money right away so we have enough vaccines and testing and lifesaving therapeutics. We want our communities to go back to normal and stay normal.”
The tentative agreement comes amid a scramble to reach a deal before senators leave town for a two-week break at the end of next week.
The White House initially requested $22.5 billion for Covid aid as part of a $1.5 trillion government spending bill that was passed earlier this month. But the coronavirus funding was stripped out to ensure the legislation, which included emergency aid to Ukraine, got enough Republican votes to get across the finish line. Democrats were furious when the Covid funds were removed.
“We cant wait until we find ourselves in the midst of another surge to act, it’ll be too late,” President Joe Biden stated Wednesday. “There’s no wall you’ll be able to construct excessive sufficient to maintain out a virus.”
Biden had also pressed lawmakers to include global relief funding to support efforts for global vaccinations. The tentative deal might include some of that aid, Romney said Thursday, but it’s “unsure as as to if there’ll be a billion of worldwide cash or not.”
While Romney said the new proposal would draw from previously allocated Covid funds, it wasn’t clear exactly which programs would see their funds diverted. Lawmakers have said, however, that it wouldn’t be taken from money set aside for state and local governments.
Some GOP senators said Thursday they needed more information before committing their support to the recent agreement.
“I don’t want to say,” Sen. Kevin Cramer R-N.D., instructed NBC News. “If it’s paid for it’s better than if it’s not paid for. I think if it’s not paid for it’s a non-starter.”
CORRECTION (March 31, 2022, 5:56 p.m. ET): A earlier model of this text misattributed the final quote in the story. It was from Sen. Kevin Cramer, not Sen. John Kennedy.
Julie Tsirkin contributed.