![]() Yet as it confronts the need to care for an even greater number of migrant children, health groups have bristled at the prospect it could take away from public health priorities even as the U.S. The Biden administration, by contrast, has moved to unwind several of the Trump era’s most restrictive immigration policies. That scrutiny was driven in part by bipartisan disapproval over then-President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy that separated children from their parents, which left HHS with responsibility for carrying out a costly reunification effort. The Trump administration faced withering criticism in 2018 for transferring hundreds of millions of dollars meant for biomedical research, HIV/AIDS services and other purposes to cover the expenses tied to an unaccompanied child population that would peak close to 14,000 that year. Still, funneling money away from existing HHS programs could raise fears of undermining other critical health initiatives and irritate the public health groups and lawmakers who advocate for the funding every year. ![]() After publication of this article, HHS insisted that additional public health funding Congress allocated as part of a Covid aid bill passed in February could be steered toward the stockpile and supplementing its pandemic response. “We have to continue to make investments to prevent the spread of Covid and its variants,” he said.īeyond taking funding from the stockpile and Covid testing, Weber could not immediately say what other areas within HHS have been affected. Mullin specifically cited the record numbers of migrant children arriving at the border.īut Becerra batted that suggestion away, telling him that “we have to continue an aggressive testing strategy.” Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) repeatedly pressed Becerra over whether HHS would benefit from Congress investing more in other parts of its operation, rather than funding a further expansion of Covid testing. “We’ve learned that this is going to be a critical component of being able to respond adequately and quickly to any future health care crisis,” he told Rep. “Even as HHS works to beat this pandemic, we are also preparing for the next public health crisis.”īecerra later stressed the need to “make sure we’ve got the resources” to replenish the Strategic National Stockpile, which came under scrutiny early in the pandemic after officials discovered it lacked anywhere near the amount of protective equipment and medical supplies needed to respond to the crisis. “The fight against Covid-19 is not yet over,” Becerra testified to a House panel on Wednesday in defense of a budget request that would allocate $905 million for the stockpile. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra has the ability to shift money among programs within the sprawling department so long as he notifies Congress, an authority that his predecessors have often resorted to during past influxes of migrant children.īut these transfers come as HHS has publicly sought to pump new funds into the Strategic National Stockpile and Covid-19 testing efforts by emphasizing the critical role that both play in the pandemic response and future preparedness efforts. “This program has relied, year after year, on the transfer of funds.” “All options are on the table,” he said, adding that HHS has traditionally sought to pull funding from parts of the department where the money is not immediately needed. HHS spokesperson Mark Weber told POLITICO that the department has worked closely with the Office of Management and Budget to find ways to keep its unaccompanied minor operation funded in the face of rising costs. “You can’t just say there’s going to be a waiting list or we’re going to shut off intake. ![]() “They’ve been in a situation of needing to very rapidly expand capacity, and emergency capacity is much more expensive,” said Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute who led HHS’ Administration for Children and Families from 2013 to 2015. In addition to transferring money from the Strategic National Stockpile and Covid-19 testing, HHS also has pulled roughly $436 million from a range of existing health initiatives across the department. It is also far above the roughly half-billion dollars that the Trump administration shifted in 2018 toward sheltering a migrant child population that had swelled as a result of its strict immigration policies, including separating children from adults at the border. On its own, the $2.13 billion in diverted money exceeds the government’s annual budget for the unaccompanied children program in each of the last two fiscal years. It also could open the administration up to further scrutiny over a border strategy that has dogged President Joe Biden for months, as administration officials struggle to stem the flow of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children into the U.S.
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