Republican lawmakers want to avoid federal funding for coronavirus tests, despite the need for such a project to safely reopen the economy
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Vice-President Mike Pence, the head of the president’s original coronavirus task force, went on Fox News Sunday to reiterate the country’s need for widespread testing in order to “liberate” the states, as Trump has described the reopening of the economy. “We have every confidence that we can have a sufficient amount of testing to be able to reopen America,” Pence told host Chris Wallace, despite currently being 23 million tests short of the target his own task force set for the end of March.
While Republicans throughout the country are united in their push to revive local businesses — in some cases at the expense of public health — they are divided on how to pursue expanded coronavirus testing, universally considered to be the cornerstone for the safe rebuilding of the economy.
In order to maintain the consistency of small-government messaging, Republican lawmakers are willing to tank an effective federal response to the crisis, even though undermining national programs — like broad CDC and NIH cuts — helped pave the road to disaster in the first place, while a general erosion of the safety net has left millions of Americans without health coverage during a pandemic.
Unfortunately, this reported effort at domestic sanctioning is only the most recent effort to jeopardize local testing programs: On April 9, the White House ended federal funding for coronavirus testing sites. According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House testing coordinator responded to one doctor’s recent request for the plastic trays required for testing with an email saying, “There is zero probably we can help.
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