Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) on Wednesday slammed the Trump administration for planning to end its support for several COVID-19 testing sites around the country at the end of the month.
TPM broke the news Tuesday that 13 COVID-19 testing sites that had received support from the federal government — including seven in Texas — would lose that support after June 30.
“The pandemic is clearly getting worse in states nationwide—and instead of trying harder to stop it, President Trump is apparently trying harder to hide it,” said Murray, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
“It’s completely unacceptable that while billions in federal dollars Congress passed to support testing sit unspent, this Administration is closing testing sites in states where new COVID-19 cases are rapidly on the rise,” Murray added. “The President should reverse this clearly counterproductive step immediately.”
HHS assistant secretary and “testing czar” Brett Giroir told reporters Wednesday that the testing sites were “transitioning to state control and state funding.”
On the same press call, HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo exploded at the assembled journalists over their reporting on the testing sites.
This really should be yelled from the rafters by every Democrat across the nation, it’s just another indication of how badly Trump and the Republicans have failed the nation…and, how they really just don’t care about the health of average Americans. There’s extensive testing for “important” Republicans, they know what’s up, which makes them cutting testing for Americans even more craven.
YAY! That’s my senator!!
Go Patty…get 'em
She is one of the good ones. I met her a looong time ago when she was a state senator.
I assume by extensive you mean repeated testing for important Republicans? Hey maybe that’s how Republican candidates will drum up support for their campaigns? Instead of raffling off AR-15s they’ll raffle off COVID-19 tests and analysis.
Yup, dump it on the states, make them compete for supplies again. Plus it helps Mitch to say that the states are irresponsible with their money if they can’t come up with a way to pay for it.