WASHINGTON – This week, U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.), the top Republican on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (LHHS), delivered opening remarks at the subcommittee’s FY23 budget hearing with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra. In his remarks, Blunt pressed Becerra on the administration’s continued efforts to impose COVID-19-related mandates while lifting the Title 42 public health emergency order at the southern border.
Click here to watch Blunt’s remarks.
Following is a transcript of Blunt’s remarks:
“Secretary Becerra, certainly appreciate you being here today. We served together in the House but I think in the last year we’ve had a chance for our relationship to grow. And I’m grateful that that’s happened. I’m grateful that we’ve – I think you’ve made a better effort than we’ve seen sometimes in the past, to get information to us as quickly as you could.
“And, as you and I have talked about, sometimes we just need to know the direction you’re headed in a quick way, and find out all of the granular detail when you can get to it. But I’m appreciative that I think that’s headed on a better path.
“I think both Chair Murray and I are eager to try to get a bill completed this year. Much better off if you have money to spend in next year’s spending cycle, October 1, or even December 1, than if it’s April 1 or March 1 or May 1, and I hope we can work together to continue to move this progress forward.
“I do think that the completion of the process last year was late enough that some of the gains we made in the final appropriations bill aren’t reflected in the budget that was submitted and by the – by the president. And I looked forward to a chance to talk to you more about that.
“You know, last year’s hearing, my opening statement focused almost totally on the pandemic. At that point we were a year in, the Trump administration had provided the country with several FDA-authorized vaccines, tests, and treatments for COVID-19, while starting a campaign to vaccinate the most high-risk Americans. And, of course, the Biden administration continued that vaccine campaign.
“Where we were last year was pretty significant in terms of the vaccines that were available and what we’d done considering the fact that a year earlier we’d never heard of COVID-19, and we were making real progress.
“The Biden administration came into the White House with lots of COVID promises on how it would get it under control and do so by following the science. Unfortunately, I have some concerns that the administration has really abandoned the approach of following the science.
“When it became clear over the last year-and-a-half that federal vaccine mandates, school closure guidance, mask requirements on public transportation, have, I think, overreached the moment and overreached the science.
“Most recently, politics appear to have colored some of the COVID decisions the department or others that the department’s responsible for have made, the CDC announced the termination of the Title 42 order last month. They announced it would occur at a specific date in the future but they announced it at a time when we were still trying to deal, in the Congress and with your department, of the ongoing challenges of COVID. You know, COVID can’t be a challenge one place and not a problem, in my view, at another place.
“Congress has been provided few details on the impact of the decision of what would happen if Title 42 goes away at the border. No plans yet to see what we do with an influx of illegal individuals into the country. Or, in your department, what happens with the unaccompanied children that would come under your responsibility. I don’t see the money in this budget reflecting every news story I see about how those numbers intend to grow.
“Further, CDC’s decision to vastly increase the number of people coming into the country who were unvaccinated, made after – that was made after CDC said what they considered the current – this is their quote, ‘current public health conditions and an increased availability of tools to fight COVID-19 allowed the border to be looked at in a different way.’
“Just days later, the department made contradictory decisions to extend our own country’s public health emergency. Emergency here, not a problem there, really doesn’t make much sense to many people, and even people in the Congress who can be persuaded that things that don’t make sense somehow do make sense.
“Just yesterday, the CDC updated guidance that two-and-a-half years into the pandemic, it’s now recommending everyone get tested before domestic travel. It seems to me that’s so out of focus with every other discussion that’s going on and hopefully, we’ll have a chance to talk about that to today also.
“I think these decisions just aren’t consistent and intellectually create lots of problems. How do you expect Americans to follow your recommendations when you say it’s safe to open the borders to unvaccinated immigrants but not safe enough to remove masks on planes, and not safe enough to have domestic – even domestic travel – without a test.
“Meanwhile, even as the borders reopen as if the pandemic’s over, Americans remain under federal vaccine and mask mandates and the department is asking Congress to provide additional funding for therapeutics, for tests, for vaccines. And I want to make it very clear I’m actually for that funding.
“You and I have talked about it. I’ve worked hard to try to come up with a package that would provide the money we need. Those accounts, in my view, need to be restored. We’re not out of the woods yet with COVID-19 and we need to be prepared for a future wave that very easily could happen.
“We need to think about what needs to happen with vaccinating the under-5 population, under the 5-year-old population, and to ensure that any American who needs a therapeutic can get one.
“Unfortunately, the administration made two poor decisions that make this additional funding nearly impossible. First, it pushed through a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 funding bill that provided less than 6 percent of COVID and less than 1 percent of funding toward vaccines and therapeutics and only 5 percent toward COVID public health.
“Simply put, the administration had the opportunity to purchase more vaccines, more tests, more treatments, and to continue more research into additional therapeutics, and to prepare for a disease that we’ll likely be facing for the next several years. And, in that huge package that went into the economy, not very much of it was dedicated to the purpose of the COVID-19 fight that was said we were in.
“Secondly, we were actively negotiating a bill last month to provide the department with $10 billion to purchase those additional therapeutics, vaccines, and tests. And right at the end of that negotiation, before the Congress could vote on the bill, again, CDC announced that COVID is not a problem at the border.
“Finally, Mr. Secretary, as it did in last year’s bill, COVID-19, I think, has been overshadowed by the budget request, I think assuming that we’ll just continue to do all of the COVID spending as emergency spending. There are a lot of new plans in this budget that the Congress just rejected in the omnibus bill. And, frankly, if we have a bill this year, and I hope we do, I think we have to look at what this Congress was willing to agree to after months of negotiation and use that as the blueprint.
“It doesn’t mean the blueprint can’t be adjusted, but assuming we’re going to see dramatic changes, like the removal of the long-standing Hyde Amendment. You know, every person on this committee who’s ever voted for a final Labor-HHS bill has voted for Hyde since its first appeared in 1976. And the bills you and I voted for in the House, if we voted for the Labor-HHS ill, all had that amendment in them.
“Mr. Secretary, the committee’s been successful over the last several years of passing bipartisan bills because we’ve made fundamental drastic funding a – something to talk about but we, first of all, have taken care of the major work of the committee.
“I was concerned when I saw the money for ARPA-H, which I also support, but there’s $4 billion of new money in the budget for ARPA-H, and no money for the traditional research at NIH, which, of course, is exactly what people have been concerned about, ARPA-H, have been concerned about, whether it was at NIH or somewhere else, does ARPA-H begin to slow down the momentum of the overall research that we need to continue to see in NIH.
“I hope we can set aside our partisan difficulties as we did last year in this committee and support programs like maternal mortality programs that benefit all Americans. The mental health programs, I will say that I was very heartened with the mental health program increases and had some concerns about some structural changes in the mental health agency of SAMHSA, that you’re responsible for. But we’ll get back to that and talk about that later.
“And again, while this will be a challenging hearing as these always are, welcome, and I appreciate our chance to begin to work together with this new responsibility that you’ve taken in the last year. And look forward to time to ask questions today.”