Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, this emergency legislation makes key investments in programs that are critical to helping our hospitals and health providers continue to respond to COVID-19.

It also improves our testing capacity, which will be critical to combating the pandemic and reopening out economy.

This is not a perfect package, but no bipartisan agreement ever is.

It does not include clearer metrics for the hospital funding that l think is necessary to ensuring that funding is distributed in a way that is fair and equitable, transparent, and responsive to the areas that are treating the highest number of COVID-19 patients.

I also do not believe that the COVID-19 testing strategy is as strong as I would have liked. Right now, the Trump Administration has no clear plan, no clear benchmarks, and no clear timelines for setting up a national program that will reopen our economy. We must hold this Administration accountable for its abysmal response to testing, and I hope that we will be able to do more in the next package.

Having said that, l want to acknowledge the good in this bill, because l do believe it will provide some additional relief and guidance that our states and local governments, territories, tribes, hospitals, and providers desperately need. We simply could not afford to wait, and thanks to our efforts we are providing some critical relief.

First, we include another $75 billion for the CARES Provider Relief Fund, or the hospital fund. This is $75 billion in addition to the $100 billion funding provided in CARES.

These funds can be used to reimburse hospitals or providers for expenses or lost revenues as a result of COVID-19.

The language remains the same as the CARES Act, so it will be critical that we continue to fight for clearer metrics for how future funding allocations will be distributed so that health care entities receive the funding they need to continue to treat patients and keep their doors open. We will also fight for transparency so that we have more real-time accounting of who is receiving these dollars and how much funding they are receiving.

We also address the critical issue of testing by making an additional investment of $25 billion. As the Speaker has been saying, testing is a essential component to how we respond, treat, and stop the transmission of this virus. Valid, widespread testing is going to be necessary if we are to reduce social distancing efforts and reopen parts of our economy.

The $25 billion investment in testing will be used for expenses related to all different areas of testing, including: research, development, validation, manufacturing, purchasing, administering, and expanding capacity for COVID-19 tests. This includes rapid point-of- care tests and serological tests.

Of that $25 billion, $11 billion will go to states, localities, territories, and tribes to develop, purchase, administer, process, and analyze COVID-19 tests. It will also fund scaling-up laboratory capacity, contact tracing, monitoring and surveillance, and supporting the workforce.

$2 billion of this $11 billion will go to the States consistent with the Public Health Emergency Preparedness grant formula, ensuring every state receives funding, and $4.25 billion will be allocated based on a state's relative number of COVID-19 cases. Tribes, tribal organizations, and urban Indian health organizations will receive $750 million for testing activities.

This $25 billion also includes key investments in our federal public health agencies--

$1 billion is provided to CDC for surveillance, epidemiology, laboratory capacity expansion, contact tracing, public health data surveillance and workforce to support the expansion and improvement of COVID-19 testing;

$1.8 billion is provided to NIH to develop, validate and improve testing, including further development of rapid point-of-care and serological testing;

$1 billion is provided to BARDA for advanced research, development, manufacturing, production, and purchase of diagnostic, serologic, or other COVID-19 tests or related supplies.

$22 million for the Food and Drug Administration to support activities associated with diagnostic, serological, antigen, and other tests; and

$600 million to support testing activities at Community Health Centers, and $225 million to support testing activities at rural health clinics.

Finally, the package also includes up to $1 billion to cover the costs of testing for the uninsured.

And there are some other key Democratic priorities that were included in the package--reporting on demographic information related to testing, diagnoses and hospitalizations, and the requirement of a testing plan.

While the Republicans would not support real-time reporting of demographic data, we were able to include regular demographic data reporting--that is to be de-identified and disaggregated. This includes data on race, ethnicity, age, sex, geographic region, and other factors for COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, and epidemiological analysis of such data.

We also were successful in adding a requirement for the Administration to submit a COVID-19 strategic testing plan that will detail how the Administration will increase domestic testing capacity and testing supplies, address disparities, and provide assistance and resources to states, localities, territories, and tribes. The plan is also required to include estimates of testing production and guidelines for testing, as well as an outline of Federal resources that will be able to support the testing plans of States, localities, territories, tribes, and tribal organizations.

This is an important provision--the Administration has been running away from trying to come to develop a federal testing plan. This requires them to do so.

While I would have required a more detailed report, with clearer benchmarks for the activities I just mentioned, including specific plans for adequate testing in underserved areas and populations, and expanding surveillance and contact tracing, this is a good first step.

We will all have to work together to hold this Administration accountable to produce a clear strategy for testing that will help us to reduce the spread of this virus, clearly identify cases and individuals with immunity, and expand capacity so that testing can help inform what communities may be able to reopen safely and without a surge in new cases.

These will be a priority as well as we draft the next package.

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