Senate negotiators strike deal for $10 billion in COVID funding

Key Senate negotiators have announced that they have struck a deal to move forward on legislation that will provide an additional $10 billion in COVID relief.

After weeks of pleas from the White House for Congress to approve more money toward COVID-19 programs that were at risk of being cut, senators have put forward a new bill for $10 billion.

The package, which sets aside money to support the nation's testing infrastructure and the development of new, variant-specific vaccines, falls far short of the initial $22.5 billion requested by the White House.

Sen. Mitt Romney, who has been leading negotiations on the bill for Republicans, announced that the new funding would be paid for entirely by offsets, meeting Republican demands to only use already-approved federal funds instead of spending any more money.

But doing so required cutting back on support for certain programs and repurposing funds that were set aside for other things. The new bill takes $500 million back from a fund to support colleges and universities during COVID, for example, and nearly $1 billion from a fund for tribal governments.