The complete dysfunction at the national level in responding to the coronavirus crisis has, predictably, trickled down to the state and local level. Beyond that, the political fight Donald Trump turned it into has meant public health departments across the country have been left high and dry. A joint investigation by the Associated Press and Kaiser Health News looked at how the $150 billion state and local government Coronavirus Relief Fund included in March's CARE Act has been implemented, and it's damning. One example: In Minneapolis, Minnesota Health Commissioner Gretchen Musicant just this month received $1.7 million—the first money her department has seen from the funds. That's $4 per resident of the city. “It’s more a hope and a prayer that we’ll have enough money,” Musicant said.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota Zoo got $6 million and a debt collection company in Minnesota got at least $5 million in a Paycheck Protection Program loan. Musicant has had to hollow out other core programs, like violence prevention, to pay for COVID-19 testing and contact tracing. The Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Senate were far more interested in protecting jobs and the economy than protecting American lives, and opted to short-change public health. “It does not make sense to me how anyone thinks this is a way to do business,” said E. Oscar Alleyne, chief of programs and services at the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “We are never going to get ahead of the pandemic response if we are still handicapped.”
As of June 30, AP and KHN found, "the states, territories and 154 large cities and counties that received allotments from the $150 billion Coronavirus Relief Fund reported spending only 25% of it." Part of the problem is the fact that the Trump administration didn't offer final guidance on how states could actually spend the money until late in June. So since the end of June, more of the money has likely been allocated and spent. But that's not the only issue. In many states, the divvying up of funds came down to legislatures, and again in Minnesota’s case, that was a huge problem. The Republican-controlled Senate threw the legislature into turmoil, refusing to work with the Democratic-controlled House and not allowing Gov. Tim Walz's plan to divvy up the funds based on need and sending them to the places that had the highest levels of infection. After a special session, Walz ended up having to spend the money based on a population-based formula, meaning cities like Minneapolis, which saw cases surge last month, were short-changed. And even then, the city government had to decide how to spend the money. This prolonged crisis has destroyed the city's economy, and it has services beyond public health that it has to try to fund. “Even when it gets to the local government, you still have to figure out how to get it to local public health,” Musicant said.
Some states are even worse. As of mid-July in Missouri, "at least 50 local health departments had yet to receive any of the federal money they requested." Local county commissioners seem to be the major logjam there, irrationally angry at public health officials. “You closed their businesses down in order to save their people’s lives and so that hurt the economy,” said Larry Jones, executive director for the Missouri Center for Public Health Excellence. “So they’re mad at you and don’t want to give you money.” The fact that there is such a circuitous path for the funding—which was absolutely intended by Congress to go to testing and contact tracing and fighting the virus—is another big part of the problem. There are too many decision-makers along the way to public health officers at the local level, and politics get in the way.
It's made much worse by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's and Trump's absolute refusal to provide general funding to state and local governments. McConnell won't consider more funding now because he says “States and localities have only spent about a fourth of the money we already sent them in the springtime.” Democrats' arguments for more money, he says, “aren’t based on math. They aren’t based on the pandemic.” Never mind that not needing the money was not a reason for pretty much any state not to use it. Some could be hoarding it now because they think McConnell and Trump won't allow any more funding.
For good reason. Just today, Trump told reporters he doesn't want House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Senate leader Sen. Chuck Schumer to get more funding for states. "They just want to take care of the bailout money. They want bailout money to go to their friends that are doing a bad job running Democrat states."
So here we sit. The virus is raging out of control all over the country, in many Republican states. People are dying. The people who are supposed to help keep people from dying are blocked by other public officials who are part of Trump's death cult. There's not enough funding for anything beyond public health. That includes schools, which are now reopening without adequate funding to combat coronavirus because, again, death cult. Republicans’ long-term project to make sure government can't function is working. And it's going to cause the needless death of thousands more Americans.
