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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is calling for a big boost for public health funding across the federal health department, but left out specific funding for Covid-19 activities.
In its budget request to Congress on Thursday, the White House asked for $20 billion over five years to support pandemic preparedness efforts at the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration. The request aligns with the White House’s National Biodefense Plan.
Of that $20 billion, $6.1 billion would go to the CDC to modernize and build laboratory capacity, strengthen public health data systems, and enhance disease surveillance. The Biden administration’s CDC budget request overall increased from $11 billion last year to $13.1 billion this year. The CDC would set aside funds to help build public health capacity at the federal, state, and local levels. The administration proposes giving the CDC federal public health data reporting authority, which Director Rochelle Walensky has advocated for.
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House Republicans have been highly critical of the CDC, and the Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight plans accused the agency of issuing “opaque, politically influenced guidance and data” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Policies in the budget don’t usually become law, but the document reflects the president’s values and priorities ahead of tense budget and government funding discussions to come later this year.
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While Democrats and Republicans largely agree that some sort of reform is needed in the federal public health system, Republicans often disagree that agencies necessarily need more money to fix their problems. Rather, their preferred approach is to narrow the agencies’ focus on infectious diseases and delegate more authority to local jurisdictions.
While the president’s budget includes big asks for general public health priorities and preparedness, the White House ignored pleas by researchers and public health experts to invest more money in developing next-generation vaccines and therapeutics for Covid-19. The White House has repeatedly pursued a failed strategy of requesting Covid-19 support funding in extra funding asks outside of the regular budget cycle.
The administration also tacked on short-term requests as well, including $1 billion for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to develop new medical countermeasures, $995 million for the Strategic National Stockpile, and $5 million for a supply chain forecasting tool at the FDA.
In addition to the pandemic-related public health funding, the budget also specifically mentions allocating $9 billion to prepare for threats posed by antimicrobial resistance, a priority that has failed to gain traction in Congress lately.
The funding requests for pandemic preparedness span beyond HHS, too. The Department of State budget proposal includes more than $1.2 billion to respond to infectious disease outbreaks, in part by expanding bilateral partnerships.
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