Political | Process

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly two years ago, lawmakers have approved more than $80 billion for virus testing.

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• Democrats unilaterally passed $47 billion of that funding in March to cover the development, manufacture, purchase, and distribution of new rapid COVID-19 tests.

• But nine months later, COVID-19 tests have become nearly impossible to find during the latest surge caused by the omicron variant, and Republicans are demanding Biden provide answers about why the administration was not prepared.

• “For the last month, Americans have faced long lines at testing centers. They’ve gone to places where they thought they could purchase a rapid test to find empty shelves,” Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican who helped craft some of the legislation providing testing funds, said.

• “The question I really have is the same that many Americans have, which is, what went wrong? Why are we facing such a shortage of tests now?”

• Blunt, along with Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican who also helped write the legislation providing COVID-19 testing money, wrote to the administration requesting information on the $82.6 billion allocated to produce and distribute the tests.

• “It is unclear to us why we are facing such dire circumstances now,” The senators wrote. “It does not appear to be because of lack of funding, but a more fundamental lack of strategy and a failure to anticipate future testing needs by the administration.”

SOURCE: WASHINGTONEXAMINER