NBC News warns that President Joe Biden’s plan to return to normal from COVID-19 is in jeopardy because Congress won’t give him a few billion more dollars. But normal has already arrived in almost every area of life across the country, and Congress approving more funding won’t change anything.
“Much of the administration’s plan for the next phase of the pandemic … was based on the assumption that Congress would be giving it billions for treatments, vaccines and testing,” Shannon Pettypiece and Sahil Kapur report. “White House officials say they have no backup plan for how to keep a number of efforts running without the funds and have already begun making cuts” after Congress cut $15.6 billion from government funding legislation.
The piece goes on to quote a senior administration official saying, “We need the money. There are immediate near-term consequences, some of which we’re having to act on this week, next week and the first week of April. So time is not on our side. We need the funding immediately.”
In total, over 75% of adults, including nearly 89% of seniors, are fully vaccinated. Another $15 billion (or $22 billion, as the White House requested) will not change the fact that normalcy has arrived throughout the country. People are back at work across the country. Liberal states and cities have lifted vaccine requirements and mask mandates. Schools are returning to mask-free, in-person instruction, even in liberal bastions such as California.
Biden and the Democratic Party, who have become addicted to pushing their policies as responses to the “emergency” of COVID-19, are ignoring that the emergency is over. We do not need vaccine approval for children under 5, which administration officials have been waiting on. Not everyone in the country needs three boosters, let alone the four the administration is trying to get approved.
The emergency has been over for some time, and Biden can’t hold normalcy hostage in hopes of spending another $15 billion to $22 billion. Two years of shutdowns and erratic mandates have run their course. So has the $3.6 trillion already spent on COVID-19.
Democrats want to cling to pandemic policymaking forever, but they have lost their leverage. There is no going back to the restrictions of 2020 or even 2021, especially given the fact that many of those restrictions overstayed their welcome in the first place. The White House can ask for billions all it wants, but “the next phase of the pandemic” has passed them by — and there’s no going back.
