Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed diverting billions of dollars of funding for President Trump’s border wall to government efforts to respond to the coronavirus.
Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced the Prioritizing Pandemic Prevention Act on Thursday to require that approximately $10 billion be redirected from fence projects along the U.S.-Mexico border to the Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Agency for International Development to make up for the money Congress will spend preparing for and responding to the virus.
“The coronavirus outbreak poses serious health, diplomatic, and economic threats to the United States, and we must be prepared to confront it head-on,” Warren said in a statement. “Rather than use taxpayer dollars to pay for a monument to hate and division, my bill will help ensure that the federal government has the resources it needs to adequately respond to this emergency.”
The loss of $10 billion would wipe out more than half of the White House’s wall coffers, which sit at $18 billion — pending Trump getting the $2 billion requested from Congress in fiscal 2021 and taking $3.8 billion from defense counternarcotic funding, as planned.
Earlier this week, the White House requested $1.25 billion in emergency funding for the coronavirus. On Tuesday, government health officials said the virus is bound to spread domestically, possibly becoming a major epidemic. Democrats balked at the president’s request and called for higher levels of funding to ensure the U.S. was taking the necessary measures to make federal funding available to state and local governments.
As of Thursday, more than 81,000 people have been diagnosed with coronavirus globally, and 3,000 people have died.
