Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response – By Peter Sullivan and Jessie Hellmann (The Hill) / Feb 25 2020
Lawmakers in both parties on Tuesday expressed growing alarm that the threat of coronavirus in the United States is serious, and that the Trump administration is not doing enough to fight it.
© Getty Images Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response
Two Cabinet members at separate hearings were grilled over what lawmakers described as an insufficient response so far, while Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said the White House’s budget request to handle the disease was lackluster.
“It seems to me at the outset that this request for the money, the supplemental, is lowballing it, possibly, and you can’t afford to do that,” Shelby told Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar during a hearing on the agency’s budget request.
“If you lowball something like this, you’ll pay for it later,” he added, telling reporters he planned to recommend a “higher” amount without offering details.
Democrats were unsparing on their criticism, with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) saying the administration was showing “towering and dangerous incompetence” in its response to the virus.
He called for at least $3.1 billion in funding and for the administration to appoint a “czar” to oversee the response.
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