Why Some States Push Back As The Biden Administration Doles Out Relief Money – By Asma Khalid (NPR) / June 18 2021
In the last few weeks, the Biden administration began distributing an unprecedented amount of money to states: $195 billion dollars from the American Rescue Plan that congressional Democrats passed in March.
With the sheer scale of dollars at stake, a huge fight has already begun brewing between some GOP-led states and the administration over exactly how to use that money, part of a larger trend of partisan warfare between state capitols and Washington over the past decade.
“These funds are important to ensure we have a strong, robust recovery … but also that it’s an equitable recovery,” Gene Sperling, the Biden administration’s point person for coordinating the rollout of COVID-19 relief money, told NPR.
Sperling was part of the Obama administration during the 2009 recession, and he said there are lessons from that last crisis that the Biden team is trying to avoid this time.
