EDITORIAL: White House pleads poverty on virus spending

Since the coronavirus pandemic hit more than two years ago, the federal government has spent nearly $6 trillion on programs and payouts designed to limit the economic, social and medical upheaval caused by the disease. But now Biden administration officials say they need more money because there’s nothing left to pay doctors and hospitals who treat uninsured COVID patients.

The request highlights the fiscal insanity that defines the Beltway.

“We need to have this money,” Jeffrey D. Zients, President Joe Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, told The New York Times.

The White House originally requested an additional $22 billion, but the measure collapsed in the House when progressives objected to a provision that would have partially financed the new outlay by clawing back unspent virus relief funds from states. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, want to know what has happened to the billions already spent.

That’s a good question.

One might think that reimbursing health care professionals for treating virus patients would have been a priority of previous relief bills. Wrong. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reports that less than 12 percent of COVID funds were directed toward “health spending.” The rest covered direct payments to individuals, handouts to states, business loan programs and tax incentives, education initiatives and other spending.

A significant portion of that money was distributed with few strings attached. Oversight of the Paycheck Protection Program, for instance, was so lax that payments prompted a massive uptick in fraud as the government doled out checks to grifters and charlatans. States — including Nevada — have more money than they know what to do with as tax revenues recovered nicely just as the federal checks were pouring in.

And yet Mr. Biden now argues that there’s no money to be found to help uninsured virus patients?

Senate Republicans urge Mr. Biden to find the money in the existing budget. “Before we would consider supporting an additional $30 billion for COVID-19 relief,” 35 GOP senators wrote, “Congress must receive a full accounting of how the government has already spent the first $6 trillion.”

That makes eminent sense. And if it means trimming generous federal apportionments to states already flush with cash, so be it.

“Budgeting is all about setting priorities, after all,” Eric Boehm of reason.com noted this week. “That’s true even in the midst of an emergency. But lawmakers used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to throw money around in ways that would be comedic if the results weren’t so tragic.”

With inflation raging, another massive spending bill would be irresponsible. There’s plenty of money available among the trillions the country has already spent.