Schumer Rules Out Recovering Unspent COVID-Relief Funds in Debt-Ceiling Fight

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, on Feb. 2, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) doubled down on the Democrats’ approach toward the debt ceiling on April 26, even ruling out recouping unspent COVID-relief funds, considering that President Joe Biden has said that the pandemic is over and the COVID national emergency has ended.

“Look, the bottom line is the president did the right thing by setting a ... May 11 deadline,” Schumer told The Epoch Times. “And the bottom line is very simple. And that is that any discussions like these types of things should occur in budget discussions, not as part of default. Tying the two, as we’ve always said, is reckless. We think what Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy and the House have done is going to bring us closer to default, not further away from it.”

The House GOP’s bill to raise the debt ceiling, whose limit is estimated to be reached in the summer, a provision to recover unspent COVID-relief funds, which they estimate to be in the tens of billions of dollars, though the exact number is uncertain.

The House bill is expected to pass the GOP-controlled House on the evening of April 26. It includes strengthening work requirements in order to be eligible for federal food stamps and Medicaid, revoking $80 billion in new funding for the Internal Revenue Service, eliminating climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, and cap spending at fiscal year 2022 levels with an annual 1 percent growth cap in spending thereafter.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) decried the bill as a win for fossil fuels.

“This isn’t about debt and deficits. It’s not about limiting, saving, and growing. It’s not about defunding woke government. It’s about the big fossil fuel donors that keep them in power,” he said. “In this case, the wokestream truly is a smokescreen. And the smoke is from all the extra oil and gas the fossil fuel industry would have us burn.”

In a Statement of Administration Policy, the White House said the president would veto the bill, which Schumer said is dead on arrival anyway in the Senate. The administration called the proposed measure “a reckless attempt to extract extreme concessions as a condition for the United States simply paying the bills it has already incurred.”

The White House, like Senate Democrats, has called for a clean debt-ceiling increase, which is a nonstarter for the GOP.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that regardless of whether the House passes the GOP bill, a compromise needs to be reached in order to avoid default, which could roil financial markets and lower the U.S. credit rating.

“The agreement needs to be reached between the speaker and the president,” he said.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) noted that the bill would save $4.5 trillion over a decade, and he lamented that President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) have not met in 83 days.