Stat News: “Top Trump officials actively lobbied Congress to deny state governments any extra funding for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout last fall – despite frantic warnings from state officials that they didn’t have the money they needed to ramp up a massive vaccination operation. The push, described to STAT by congressional aides in both parties and openly acknowledged by one of the Trump officials, came from multiple high-ranking Trump health officials in repeated meetings with legislators. Without the extra money, states spent last October and November rationing the small pot of federal dollars they had been given. And when vaccines began shipping in December, states seemed woefully underprepared.”

The previously unreported lobbying efforts underscore that even after the Trump administration spent billions helping drug makers develop Covid-19 vaccines, it not only dismissed states’ concerns about the help they would need to roll them out, but actively undermined their efforts to press Congress to get the funding they needed. Much of the lobbying push came from Paul Mango, the former deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services. He argued, repeatedly, that states hadn’t demonstrated they needed additional funding because, at least as of last October, they hadn’t spent the $200 million that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent to states in September. Far from denying his efforts, Mango doubled down in an interview with STAT – and even accused states of pressing for the money to bolster their empty tax coffers. ‘A lot of them had shut down their economies and they weren’t getting tax revenue,’ he said. ‘I’m sure they could use money – that’s not in dispute – what’s in dispute is whether they needed money given all they hadn’t used to actually administer vaccines,’ Mango added, suggesting that his lobbying efforts were an attempt to protect taxpayers from wasteful government spending.”