April 7, 2022

Earlier this week, Senate negotiators reached a deal on a $10 billion COVID-19 supplemental appropriations package. Although the bill would provide far less than the $22.5 billion in COVID spending requested by the Biden administration last month, the White House has released a statement in support of the legislation. However, the agreement, which was orchestrated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), has since stalled over the repeal of a pandemic-related restriction on border crossings.

On April 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it will terminate a Trump-era health order, known as “Title 42,” which has prevented any unauthorized travel into the U.S. and effectively blocked migrants from making claims of asylum at the border. For their part, GOP lawmakers are demanding consideration of an amendment requiring the Biden administration to keep the order in place. Democratic leaders have thus far tried to avoid such a vote, which has led to the current stalemate. Absent an agreement by Friday, the bill will not be considered until Congress returns from a two-week recess.

New COVID Spending

Under the proposed supplemental, $10 billion in spending would be directed to the Department of Health and Human Services, all within the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund (PHSSEF). This includes $9.25 billion for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), of which not less than $5 billion would be to research, develop, manufacture, produce, purchase, and administer therapeutics. The remaining amounts under this section may be used to purchase vaccines and maintain testing capacity. The legislation would also reserve $750 million for research and clinical trials for emerging coronavirus variants and to support the sustainment and expansion of vaccine manufacturing capacity.

Offsets

The cost of the legislation would be fully offset by repurposing unspent COVID relief funds. Of direct relevance to California’s public lands counties, the legislation would cut $887 million from the Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Fund. The Fund, which was created under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA; P.L. 117-2) and has yet to be implemented by the Treasury Department, provides two years of general fiscal aid to revenue sharing counties (public lands counties) and Tribal governments. The supplemental spending bill would cut the county share from $1.5 billion to $826.4 million. The tribal share of the Fund would be reduced from $500 million to $278.2 million.

The measure also would rescind unspent ARPA and CARES Act (P.L. 116-136) funds that were provided to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make food and agricultural commodity purchases, as well as related loans and grants to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the supplemental would pull unspent funds from pandemic-related programs aimed at protecting aviation jobs and supporting music and theater venues. Funds would also be redirected from higher education relief and small business credit programs.

ARPA Flexibility Bill Included in Spending Package

In a victory for CSAC, the supplemental includes the text of the State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Fiscal Recovery, Infrastructure, and Disaster Relief Flexibility Act (S. 3011/H.R. 5735). The bipartisan bill, championed by Senators Alex Padilla (D-CA) and John Cornyn (R-TX), provides additional ARPA Fiscal Recovery Fund expenditure flexibility to counties and other entities. Specifically, the legislation allows jurisdictions to spend $10 million or 30 percent of their Recovery Fund allocation, whichever is greater, on a wide variety of infrastructure and community development-related activities (e.g., road, bridge, and safety improvement projects; rural surface transportation program projects as authorized by the IIJA; public transit and climate resiliency projects; and, Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) projects, among other purposes).

The bill also allows Recovery Fund dollars to be used to provide “emergency relief from natural disasters or the negative economic impacts of natural disasters, including temporary emergency housing, food assistance, financial assistance for lost wages, or other immediate needs.” Finally, the supplemental codifies aspects of the Treasury Department’s Final Rule governing the use of ARPA State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund dollars, namely provisions that allow counties to use up to $10 million in funding for the provision of general government services – including for road building, maintenance and other infrastructure – without having to go through a complicated revenue loss calculation.

Wildfire Hearing

On April 5, the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands held a hearing entitled, “Investing in Wildfire Management, Ecosystem Restoration, and Resilient Communities: Examining the Biden Administration’s Priorities for Implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.” Testifying before the panel were Mr. Jeff Rupert, Director, Office of Wildland Fire at the U.S. Department of the Interior; Mr. Brian Ferebee, Chief Executive of Intergovernmental Relations at the U.S. Forest Service (USFS); and, Ms. Jaelith Hall-Rivera, Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry at the USFS.

While Democrats and Republicans on the panel largely agreed that mitigating wildfires will ultimately require improved forest management, the two parties are still split on the root causes that have led to the rise in catastrophic fires. For their part, Democrats maintained that climate change has exacerbated the wildfire crisis. From their perspective, the bipartisan infrastructure law (P.L. 117-58) will provide the needed resources to the USFS and the Interior Department to shift away from commercial management and emergency suppression and towards fire adaptation and ecosystem services. Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, pointed to bureaucratic hurdles and litigation from environmental groups as the major obstacles to effective forest management.

As part of their testimony, the Biden administration officials highlighted provisions of the infrastructure law intended to address the wildfire crisis. Among other things, the new law will provide more than $5 billion to both Interior and USFS Wildland Fire Management programs over the next five years for coordinated efforts for managing wildfire risk. It also begins to address workforce challenges by directing the relevant agencies to develop an occupational series and increase base pay for wildland firefighters. The administration also is exploring a longer-term solution to increase future compensation for firefighters. It should be noted that funding was also made available by the infrastructure law to convert temporary wildland firefighters to permanent, full-time positions available year-round for fire response and risk mitigation activities. The witnesses referred to these, and other actions, as a significant down payment and urged Congress to approve funding for additional preventative measures. Among other things, this includes significantly increasing the mechanical treatment of forests over the next decade.