Elizabeth Warren to Introduce Bill to Strip Border Wall Money to Pay for Virus Effort: Democrats Weaponize Coronavirus Against Trump

The media has been accusing President Trump and his supporters of falsely claiming Democrats are weaponizing the coronavirus against Pres...

The media has been accusing President Trump and his supporters of falsely claiming Democrats are weaponizing the coronavirus against President Trump.

Trump's new conspiracy theory is that Dems/media are weaponizing coronavirus against him.

This needs to be seen as part of a broader effort to render the opposition and mediating institutions illegitimate.

It's really about dodging accountability:https://t.co/9gSue5eNF9 pic.twitter.com/KzSizIAKml

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) February 27, 2020

Right on cue, Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) announced Thursday morning she will be filing a bill to strip President Trump’s border wall of funding and transfer the money, estimated at $10 billion, to fighting the coronavirus.

Using her Senate account, Warren tweeted about the bill, saying, “Coronavirus poses a serious health, diplomatic, & economic threat, & we must be prepared to confront it head-on. So I’m introducing a bill to transfer all funding for @realDonaldTrump’s racist border wall to @HHSGov & @USAID to combat coronavirus.”

Excerpt from Warren press release:

United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, today unveiled legislation, the Prioritizing Pandemic Prevention Act, requiring all funds that have been appropriated to build a border wall-including funds directly appropriated by Congress and funds diverted by the executive branch from other accounts-to be immediately transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for the purpose of combatting the novel coronavirus.

Coronavirus poses a serious health, diplomatic, & economic threat, & we must be prepared to confront it head-on. So I’m introducing a bill to transfer all funding for @realDonaldTrump's racist border wall to @HHSGov & @USAID to combat coronavirus. https://t.co/8IEhBWRjeL pic.twitter.com/9oAF0A2lGT

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 27, 2020

“The coronavirus outbreak poses serious health, diplomatic, and economic threats to the United States, and we must be prepared to confront it head-on,” said Senator Warren. “Rather than use taxpayer dollars to pay for a monument to hate and division, my bill will help ensure that the federal government has the resources it needs to adequately respond to this emergency.”

Currently, more than 81,000 people have contracted the coronavirus, which is highly communicable and has killed approximately 3,000 people. The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, and HHS Secretary Alex Azar has declared it a public health emergency in the United States. In addition, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently announced that Americans should “prepare in the expectation that [a U.S. coronavirus outbreak] will be bad” and stated that “it’s not so much a question of if this will happen…but rather…a question of…when.”

In the midst of this potential pandemic, President Trump has failed to direct significant financial resources to his coronavirus response. His Fiscal Year 2021 budget, released just weeks ago, proposed decimating the HHS budget, including CDC’s, and the President has requested that Congress reprogram funding dedicated to fighting Ebola to coronavirus. The president also requested a mere $1.25 billion in emergency supplemental appropriations to combat the virus-an amount that received bipartisan opposition-and his administration is reportedly transferring $37 million to coronavirus efforts from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which funds heating for poor families. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has continued to request funding for a wall on the southern border.

While emergency supplemental appropriations are not typically offset, the Prioritizing Pandemic Prevention Act would provide a down payment of an estimated $10 billion in funding for coronavirus efforts by redirecting funds from border wall funding at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Defense (DoD) counterdrug and military construction funding previously diverted for wall construction, including any unobligated balances of such funding from fiscal year 2019….

Text of the bill:

A BILL
To transfer all border wall funding to the Department of
Health and Human Services and USAID to combat
coronavirus.
1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
3 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
4 This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Prioritizing Pandemic
5 Prevention Act’’.
6 SEC. 2. TRANSFER OF FUNDS TO COMBAT CORONAVIRUS
7 DISEASE.
8 Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any un9 obligated Federal funds appropriated or otherwise made
10 available to plan, develop, or construct a physical barrier

2

1 along the international border between the United States
2 and Mexico shall be immediately transferred to the De3 partment of Health and Human Services and the United
4 States Agency for International Development for the ex5 press purpose of combating coronavirus disease (COVID–
6 19).

Border wall update from Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott as of Monday, “126 miles completed, 213 miles under construction and 414 miles in pre-construction>”

Border Wall System update:

▫️ 126 miles completed
▫️ 213 miles under construction
▫️ 414 miles in pre-construction pic.twitter.com/Y1CCAHTxmB

— Chief Rodney Scott (@USBPChief) February 24, 2020