White House to ask Congress for more money to fight coronavirus
The Trump administration will ask Congress this week for more money to fight the deadly virus that originated in Wuhan, China, a source familiar with the matter told FOX Business.
The exact amount of the request to Congress is unknown. The Obama administration requested $4.64 billion for immediate response plus $1.54 billion as a Contingency Fund during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
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Last week, high-profile Senate Democrats including Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. Dick Durbin sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar about the "failure so far to outline what additional resources [the administration] needs to respond to the rapidly developing coronavirus outbreak."
“We remain deeply concerned with the rapidly evolving 2019 Novel Coronavirus… While we appreciate the critical work happening at [HHS] and government-wide to respond to this emergency, the Administration has not been forthcoming about how much funding will be needed to respond to the outbreak," the senators wrote.
The supplemental spending request is being finalized and could be sent to Congress as soon as Monday, the source said.
There are dozens of confirmed cases of the virus in the U.S., and many of the patients were evacuated from Wuhan or the infected Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Japan.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro advocated for bringing home more of the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain amid the coronavirus crisis in China.
"We've offshored far too much of our supply chain, not just for corona, but also for the essential medicines we need," Navarro said on "Sunday Morning Futures." "Same reasons we offshored a lot of our other stuff: it's a cheap labor environment, lax environment, and most of all, unfair trade practices."
He downplayed the threat to the U.S. economy, however.
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"The American economy is extremely strong and not particularly vulnerable to what happens in China."
Authorities are reporting 2,442 deaths among 76,936 cases in mainland China, mostly in the central province of Hubei.
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Navarro said the Trump administration is focusing on ensuring the U.S. has access to protective gear like facemasks and supporting the race to develop treatment drugs and vaccines.
FOX Business' Blake Burman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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