A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, APRIL 1 , 2022
BY DAN DIAMOND
AND RACHEL ROUBEINKey Senate lawmakers said
Thursday they had agreed on a
framework to continue funding
coronavirus vaccines, antiviral
treatments and other supplies for
Americans, but that would drasti-
cally cut plans to help vaccinate
millions of people around the
world.
“We’ve reached an agreement
in principle on all the spending
and all of the offsets,” said Sen.
Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who has
led negotiations for Republicans
after they balked at the need for
$15 billion in new funds, and
House Democrats raised concerns
about a planned compromise.
If passed in its current form, the
$10 billion deal would represent a
significant disappointment for
the White House, which had pub-
licly campaigned for at least
$22 billion in new funds and
would probably be forced to scale
back elements of its planned re-
sponse. But lawmakers are facing
a rapidly approaching deadline,
with Congress soon taking a two-
week break, and administration
officials warning that they are ef-
fectively out of cash for urgent
coronavirus needs. The federal
government has already begun to
wind down a program to cover the
costs of health-care providers that
give coronavirus tests, treatments
and vaccinations to uninsured
Americans, an initiative that offi-
cials said has cost about $2 billion
per month.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) told The Wash-
ington Post he was “optimistic” a
final deal would be reached, a
stance echoed by Senate Majority
Leader Charles E. Schumer
(D-N.Y.) in remarks on the Senate
floor.
“We are getting close to a final
agreement that would garner bi-
partisan support,” Schumer said,
adding that lawmakers were
“working diligently” to agree on a
package that would address both
domestic and global needs.
Romney, who said the money
would come from unspent funds
in previous stimulus packages,
added that he expected a vote on
the deal next week.
About half of the money would
go for covid therapeutics, while
the other half would be at the
“discretion” of the secretary of the
Department of Health and Hu-
man Services, Sen. Roy Blunt
(R-Mo.) told reporters. A Republi-
can aide said that $750 million
was being eyed for research and
development of new vaccines and
treatments.
Several GOP lawmakers said
about $1 billion in funding would
be set aside to support global vac-
cinations — down from the White
House’s $5 billion request for glob-
al aid. But that number appeared
to be in flux, with several Demo-
crats on Thursday arguing for con-
siderably more and lawmakers ac-
knowledging that they were stillnegotiating.
“If there was a deal, I think we’d
be voting on it,” said Sen. John
Thune (S.D.), the chamber’s No. 2
Republican.
Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-
Del.) has been among the lawmak-
ers pushing to include some fund-
ing for the global response after
some lawmakers moved to drop it
completely. “There [are] 2.5 bil-
lion people unvaccinated in the
world, and that is an ongoing daily
risk to the United States,” Coons
said.
The funding package’s collapse
three weeks ago prompted U.S.
officials to warn that they had
exhausted funds to purchase vac-
cines, antiviral treatments and
other supplies, putting the nation
at risk. The White House has al-ready reduced the supply of mono-
clonal antibody treatments to
states by 35 percent because of the
lack of pandemic funding. Con-
gress is also set to begin a two-
week recess on April 9, raising
fears that failing to secure a deal
now could stall the U.S. response
into May.
“Congress, please act. You have
to act immediately,” President
Biden said in a speech on Wednes-
day, saying that officials had al-
ready been forced to delay or can-
cel planned orders for covid treat-
ments. “The consequences of inac-
tion are severe. They’ll only grow
with time, but it doesn’t have to be
that way.”
A Biden administration plan to
help vaccinate the world will also
soon run out of money, adminis-tration officials said. That plan,
led by the U.S. Agency for Interna-
tional Development, would boost
the infrastructure for administer-
ing vaccinations in developing na-
tions, which officials say will curb
the risk of variants emerging over-
seas and leading to outbreaks in
the United States.
“Without more funding... the
United States would have to turn
its back on countries that need
urgent help to boost their vaccina-
tion rates,” Atul Gawande, who
leads global health at USAID,
wrote in a Washington Post op-ed
on Wednesday. “We can’t let this
happen. It not only endangers
people abroad, but also risks the
health and prosperity of all Ameri-
cans. The virus is not waiting on
Congress to negotiate; it is infect-ing people and mutating as we
speak.”
Some Democrats have called
for as much as $17 billion in global
virus aid and criticized congres-
sional leaders for backing away
from international commitments.
“I recall the president saying
that the United States should be,
would be, the ‘arsenal of vaccines,’ ”
said Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.),
vice chair of the House Committee
on Foreign Affairs. “And I’m ex-
tremely disappointed that ever
since that statement, and at every
possible opportunity, this has been
de-prioritized.” Malinowski said he
would not support a funding pack-
age if it did not include some mon-
ey for the global response.
For weeks, the White House has
publicly sought more than $22 bil-
lion for the response, although
Biden officials in early January
had privately concluded that they
needed as much as $80 billion in
additional virus aid for vaccines,
therapeutics and other supplies.
By early March, congressional
leaders had settled on about
$15.6 billion and sought to attach
that to a broader package to fund
the government, an effort to en-
sure passage of the virus aid.
But some House Democrats
were upset over one of the financ-
ing mechanisms — an effort to
claw back money for state govern-
ments to address their pandemic
needs. The uproar caused House
leaders to strip the coronavirus
aid from the deal.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson
(R), the chairman of the National
Governors Association, said it
would have been unfair to rescind
money that states had been count-
ing on. But he said he still wanted
Congress to clinch a deal on more
aid, as long as it was fully paid for.
“The last thing that Americans
would expect is that we get caught
flat-footed again,” Hutchinson
said in an interview last week.
“The administration says that
takes additional funding. I take
them at face value for those com-
ments, and so then we got to figure
out where that money’s going to
come from.”Amy Goldstein contributed to this
report.Lawmakers close on virus funding deal that halves White House request
JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on Capitol Hill this week. “We’ve reached an agreement in principle on all the
spending and all of the offsets,” Romney said, and indicated that he expects a vote on the deal next week.BY MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR
AND PAUL KANERep. Madison Cawthorn
(R-N.C.) was called into a private
meeting with House Minority
Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)
this week to discuss his outland-
ish accusation that prominent
political players had invited him
to orgies and done “a key bump of
cocaine” as he watched.
McCarthy has hosted similar
private meetings after other Re-
publican members aligned with
former president Donald Trump
stole attention away from his
agenda — for example, when two
members recently addressed a
white nationalist event — but this
time, he did something different:
He talked openly about it.
“I mean he’s got to turn himself
around,” McCarthy told reporters
on Wednesday, soon after the
closed-door meeting. “This is un-
acceptable and there is no evi-
dence to this, he changes what he
tells and that’s not becoming of a
congressman. He did not tell the
truth.”
McCarthy has made clear that
he believes the pathway to regain-
ing the majority requires Repub-
licans to present a united front
and keep the public focused on
the Democrats’ intraparty fights
rather than those within his own
party. He wants to focus on telling
voters exactly how Republicans
will introduce needed legislation
and hold the Biden administra-
tion accountable, and he doesn’t
want that message overshad-
owed.
But there’s a splintering divide
among House Republicans be-
tween staunch Trump allies who
tend to offend more than legislate
and members who have grown
restless over McCarthy’s lack of
an upper hand with the former
group.
McCarthy listed other unbe-
coming behavior that Cawthorn
has displayed: driving on a sus-
pended license earlier this
month, calling Ukrainian Presi-
dent Volodymyr Zelensky a
“thug” amid Russia’s violent inva-
sion and lying to a Capitol Police
officer in an attempt to sneak a
GOP candidate onto the House
floor. But the Republican leader
stopped short of punishing Caw-
thorn, allowing him to remain on
committees.
Cawthorn has remained defi-
ant and has not recanted his tale
of a Washington filled with “sex-
ual perversion” and drugs.
“The radical left, the establish-
ment, and the media want to take
me down,” Cawthorn tweeted on
Thursday, even though the chal-
lenges have been coming from
within his own party. “Their at-
tacks have been relentless. I won’t
stop fighting. I won’t bow to the
mob. They want to silence the
America First movement. I’m not
going anywhere.”
McCarthy met privately with
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a Trump
ally who is being investigated for
potentially violating sex-traffick-
ing laws, accusations he has de-
nied.
“I’ve spoken to Mr. Gaetz about
the accusations. He’s told me he’s
innocent of the accusations,” Mc-
Carthy told reporters last year
after previously pledging to re-
move Gaetz from committees if
the allegations proved true.
McCarthy has also met private-
ly with Rep. Marjorie Taylor
Greene (R-Ga) and Rep. Paul A.
Gosar (R-Ariz.) following their
numerous offenses, most recently
when both addressed attendees
at a white nationalist event.
McCarthy called their attend-
ance “unacceptable,” stressing
that the party does not embrace
those values. But he has also
promised to reassign both mem-
bers to committees after Demo-
crats stripped them of that rightfollowing numerous contro-
versies.
He stayed notably silent when
Gosar posted an anime video
showing himself killing Rep. Al-
exandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
and assaulting President Biden.
He did not publicly condemn
Greene when she posted the of-
fice number of 13 Republican
colleagues who voted for the in-
frastructure bill, which led to
members receiving violent
threats against them and their
families. Instead, McCarthy told
colleagues at a weekly conference
meeting to stop attacking one
another and drawing unwanted
attention, according to numerous
aides in the room. It struck some
members as McCarthy needing to
do more to discipline the group.
It’s not that he doesn’t know
how. For months, McCarthy has
proudly punished those who vot-
ed to impeach Trump, particular-
ly Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and
Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.).
Some of his critics say that
McCarthy’s approach is based on
his ambitions to be speaker if
Republicans regain control of the
House in the midterm election
this fall and the need to appease a
majority of his conference, in-
cluding the most rambunctious
members.
While the discipline may seem
like a contradiction to many on-
lookers, fellow Republicans de-
fend it.
Many Republican members
have a similar mentality to Mc-Carthy, saying that dealing with
intraparty riffs behind closed
doors diminishes the chances of
giving even more oxygen to a
colleague’s bad behavior.
“As far as some of this goes —
which sometimes is nonsensical,
sometimes it’s personality con-
flict, sometimes it’s just some
folks that are a little weird, I don’t
know how else to say it — I think
it’s best to try and deal with it
internally and see if you can
bridge those gaps,” Rep. Jeff Van
Drew (R-N.J.) said.
He continued, “You know what
we don’t need? We’re going to get
the majority. We don’t need a
circular firing squad. We don’t
need to beat each other up. We
don’t need to literally destroy the
possibilities of really making
some positive change.”
GOP members and aides, most
of whom spoke on the condition
of anonymity to discuss private
conversations, noted that McCar-
thy is publicly more vocal when a
majority of his conference is unit-
ed against the behavior of a par-
ticular colleague. When members
began to complain that Cheney’s
constant criticism about Trump
was becoming too much of a
distraction about a year ago, Mc-
Carthy endorsed the movement
to remove her as conference
chair, as she no longer resonated
with her colleagues.
A similar scenario played out
with Cawthorn as members, in-
cluding those who typically do
not complain, expressed theiroutrage when they returned to
Washington this week.
In an interview last week with
the “Warrior Poet Society” pod-
cast, Cawthorn was asked wheth-
er the hit television show “House
of Cards” was an accurate reflec-
tion of life in the nation’s capital.
Cawthorn responded by talking
about the “sexual perversion that
goes on in Washington.”
Cawthorn also claimed that he
had witnessed “people that are
leading on the movement to try
and remove addiction in our
country” consume “a key bump of
cocaine right in front of you.”
Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.)
does not consider himself one to
call out his own colleagues or
cause much of a stir. He said
Tuesday was only the third time
during his decade-long career on
Capitol Hill that he stood up
during a weekly GOP conference
to say something. This time it was
about Cawthorn.
“I’ve not had anything really
get to me quite like the remarks
made by my colleague from North
Carolina in the time that I’ve been
here,” he said. “It’s not because
there haven’t been other things
said, by him or anybody else, that
would be judged as nonsensical
or out of line. I mean, a lot of
people say things up here that are
just kind of crazy talk.”
He told all his colleagues that
they all better prioritize behaving
from now to the midterms, noting
their singular focus should be on
“not bringing negative attention
to ourselves.”
A Republican in the room said
that when Womack spoke up,
members audibly groaned and
grumbled, expressing that they
too were upset by Cawthorn’s
remarks and how it implicated
them.
“Those remarks were very un-
fortunate, a terrible exaggeration
of the truth, and that if you’re
going to make an accusation like
that, name names; just name
names. And spare the people like
me who kind of live boring lives,
I’m in bed by 9 o’clock every
night,” Womack added.
Republicans also demurred
that Cawthorn’s remarks brought
unwanted attention to the confer-
ence just days after retreat in
Florida, where members worked
to finalize issue policies they be-
lieve would unite them.
“When you actually run on a
platform, here’s what we care
about, here’s what we’re going to
do because the American people
care about that —- that will help
keep the team together and ac-
complishing what we told thepeople we were going to do when
we ran for the job and the reason
why they’re gonna put us in the
majority and make Kevin speak-
er,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said
last Friday in Ponte Vedra, Fla.
For Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)
Cawthorn’s latest comments were
not the tipping point for him. He
listed multiple reasons Cawthorn
lost his trust, including the con-
gressman’s decision to declare he
would compete in a neighboring
district, only to jump back into
his race weeks later. Fed up with
the antics, Tillis on Thursday
endorsed state senator Chuck Ed-
wards over Cawthorn in primary
race in North Carolina’s 11th Con-
gressional District.
“The fact that he would leave,
move on to another district 11
months into his current tenure;
and some of his comments, at the
worst possible time on Ukraine,
calling Zelensky a thug; they just
speak to a lack of judgment that I
expect more of a member in our
congressional delegation,” Tillis
said.
McCarthy acknowledged the
same, telling reporters that Caw-
thorn’s repeated patterns and
consistent lying to spin his way
out of problems is not the way to
behave on Capitol Hill. He said
that during their meeting, Caw-
thorn denied knowing what co-
caine is after suggesting he had
seen a congressional staffer using
the drug in a garage 100 yards
away.
“It’s just frustrating. There’s no
evidence behind his statements
when I sat down with him of
what’s true,” he said.
During the retreat in Florida
last week, McCarthy often touted
the need to not just win the
majority next year, but to ensure
that a “governing majority” is
prioritized. Members and aides
privately acknowledged that also
means electing candidates who
prioritize legislating over public-
ity that could make a potential
speakership difficult.
McCarthy previously said he
still supported Cawthorn’s reelec-
tion following his anti-Ukraine
remarks. But when pressed on it
Thursday, McCarthy dodged the
question.
“We talked about Madison yes-
terday,” McCarthy told reporters.
“In the process, there was just no
evidence that he provided that
make me think that that story is
right.
Asked again, McCarthy re-
sponded with silence.Felicia Sonmez contributed to this
report.McCarthy tries to bridge splintering divide in House GOP
JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
In addition to Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has
met privately with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) after offenses.Cawthorn’s outlandish
comments prompt rare
airing by minority leader