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Law360 (February 27, 2020, 3:27 PM EST) -- Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill Thursday that would reallocate funds for a southern border wall to combat the coronavirus outbreak.
Warren's Prioritizing Pandemic Prevention Act is aimed at defunding the wall and transferring the roughly $10 billion from the executive branch to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Agency for International Development to develop a more robust response to the coronavirus.
The funds would mostly come from the more than $8 billion collected by President Donald Trump after he declared a national emergency over the wall last year.
"The coronavirus outbreak poses serious health, diplomatic, and economic threats to the United States, and we must be prepared to confront it head-on," Warren, D-Mass., said in a statement. "Rather than use taxpayer dollars to pay for a monument to hate and division, my bill will help ensure that the federal government has the resources it needs to adequately respond to this emergency."
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned Americans that a severe U.S. outbreak is "not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when," Trump downplayed those concerns at a White House news conference Wednesday.
"The risk to the American people remains very low," Trump said, adding that he sent a $2.5 billion supplemental budget request to Capitol Hill to fund coronavirus efforts. "We think that's a lot," he said of the request. "But the Democrats and I guess Senator [Chuck] Schumer wants us to have much more than that."
"We're going to spend whatever is appropriate," Trump continued. "Hopefully, we're not going to have to spend too much."
But Warren's office said Thursday that Trump has failed to deliver an appropriate response given the thousands of coronavirus deaths worldwide. HHS has declared that coronavirus is a public health emergency in the U.S.
Trump has continued to funnel resources into the wall to combat illegal immigration. The 2019 emergency declaration allowed Trump to pull $600 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund, $2.5 billion from the U.S. Department of Defense's counter-drug-activity funds and $3.6 billion from military construction coffers toward border wall construction.
The president's fiscal 2021 budget seeks $2 billion to fund his campaign promise to wall off the U.S.' southern border.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced last week that it was waiving procurement laws — including requirements for full and open competition and providing bonds before contractors can start work — to expedite wall-building projects in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois floated a bill Wednesday to reverse a "short sighted and dangerous" transfer of $3.8 billion from the Department of Defense toward the wall construction.
During a budget hearing Wednesday, lawmakers grilled acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf about the increased wall funding. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, joked that money allocated for the border wall in the administration's budget request could be used to boost efforts to combat the coronavirus.
"Any dollars you want to take from the wall over to that? Be happy to go ahead and make that transfer. Just kidding," he said.
--Additional reporting by Nadia Dreid, Kaitlyn Burton and Suzanne Monyak. Editing by Marygrace Murphy.
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