Congress should ignore the Biden administration’s false alarms.

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T his week, the House of Representatives will take up a slew of legislation premised on one basic and indisputable assumption: The Covid-19-induced public-health emergency (PHE) is over, so it’s time for the government to return to normal.

Although the threat posed by the pandemic has really been over for at least a year, the Biden administration has maintained the emergency status to serve its own political interests. The House’s planned action may have caused the Biden administration to acknowledge reality with a statement yesterday that it would end the national and public-health emergencies on May 11. While separate, the two emergency declarations afford the federal government increased powers and spending capabilities. By making this announcement, the Biden administration is explicitly acknowledging what many observers have known for some time: The public has resumed normal life. Covid-19 consistently ranks near bottom of Americans’ list of concerns. Americans are more worried about the economy, the deficit, the media, and poor leadership in government than they are about the coronavirus.

In threatening to veto the House legislation if it reaches his desk, President Biden says the emergencies should remain in place through mid spring. The Biden administration is claiming that the Republican House majority is irresponsibly ending the emergencies too quickly. According to the administration, hospitals and nursing homes “will be plunged into chaos,” and “tens of millions of Americans could be at risk of abruptly losing their health insurance.” Further, the administration brazenly claims that ending the emergency declarations immediately will terminate the Title 42 policy to expel illegal border crossers — even though the Biden administration itself already tried to end that policy last year.

At the same time, the administration continues to use the pretext of the pandemic to expand government power. In a separate statement, while admitting that “COVID-19 is no longer the disruptive threat it once was,” the administration seeks to continue to compel any health-care provider that participates in Medicare or Medicaid — i.e., the vast majority — to mandate Covid-19 vaccination for staff. But of the likely few this policy, at this point, would cover, a large portion have built natural immunity from recovering from a Covid infection. Maintaining such a mandate when the pandemic is long over makes no sense, particularly given the shortages of health-care workers throughout the country.  

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The media have largely taken the administration’s arguments at face value, but several of them are blatantly false. First, the assertion that ending the PHE puts anyone’s health insurance at risk is wrong. Starting April 1, states can finally remove people no longer eligible for Medicaid — estimated at nearly 16 million — from their rolls. But ending the PHE does not affect that in any way. Congress and the president have already agreed to actions that affect the program. Congress, recognizing the unmanageable burden of Medicaid expansion on states and taxpayers, already unlinked Medicaid expansion from the PHE.

Further, hospitals and nursing homes will not be “plunged into chaos.” During the height of the pandemic, it made sense for Congress to grant the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) increased flexibility to deal with the influx of Covid cases. Increased payments for certain services had some justification. But we are experiencing nothing like that currently. Predictions of an unmanageable surge — the much-feared “tripledemic” — simply are not being borne out in hospitals this winter. Ending the PHE will simply return federal health programs to normal. At a time when hospitalizations and mortality rates for Covid-19 are at their lowest levels since the onset of the pandemic, this is common sense.

What about Title 42? The administration’s claims fall apart upon scrutiny. The original Trump-administration policy was not based on the PHE. Rather, the statute authorizes the CDC to take quarantining actions when there is a “serious danger of the introduction” of a disease. It does not have to be tied to a PHE.

With the best arguments in favor of extending the emergency declarations revealed as faulty, it’s obvious that the current administration is just playing politics. We shouldn’t be surprised. The administration has consistently attempted to use the pandemic to advance its broader agenda, from eviction moratoria to student-debt forgiveness. The administration’s claim to be protecting the most vulnerable through a vaccine mandate, even as the vast majority of those actually most vulnerable — senior citizens — have already taken the vaccine, should be seen in a similar light.

While the debt-limit debate may overshadow the important work Congress is undertaking this week, policy-makers should bear in mind that the increased federal spending and power afforded by pandemic policies are parts of that conversation. According to the Congressional Budget Office, ending the PHE now would reduce federal spending by at least $2 billion.

Congress should ignore the administration’s false alarms about immediately ending the emergency declarations and unnecessary Covid restrictions.