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March 9 (UPI) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she hoped to put a standalone COVID-19 relief bill on the House floor after stripping funding from a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending package. The COVID-19 relief funding was stripped from the bill following opposition to a provision that would use money from states that did not make use of funding provided to them under the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to offset the cost.
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"It is heartbreaking to remove the COVID funding and we must continue to fight for urgently needed COVID assistance but unfortunately that will not be included in this bill," Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote in a letter to colleagues, citing "Republican insistence" and "resistance by a number" of Democratic members to the offsets.
A Democratic aide told The Hill a standalone COVID-19 relief bill would strip the offset proposal and Pelosi said during a press conference that she hoped to take the measure to the House floor before the end of the day.
"It will ... really contain what the administration says that we need," Pelosi said. "It's a separate funding package to continue the battle against coronavirus largely focusing on the new therapies that are there."
The spending bill includes $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine but totaled more than 2,741 pages and was released at around 1:30 a.m., leaving lawmakers upset as they had inadequate time to review it before a planned vote hours later.
Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., told CNN it was "unacceptable" that lawmakers learned of the offset plan Wednesday morning after the deal was "cut behind closed doors."
"Our states have planned for these dollars," Craig said. "We fought like tooth and nail to get these dollars home to our state governments. And now we're sitting here this morning talking about being called back is the option."
Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., said her state could lose about $600 million in funding under the plan.
"New York and California got their dollars," she told CNN. "It's not fair that 30 states not get their dollars."
In a letter, Pelosi wrote that the Biden administration identified $8 billion from American Rescue Plan programs that had expired with remaining funds available and that Democrats were able to ensure that "the remaining payments to localities received no cuts in funding."
She added that "Republicans continued to insist on state cuts" and also alluded to GOP resistance when explaining why the funding was cut in her press conference.
"We're in a legislative process. We have a deadline for keeping government open. We have a lively negotiation. It has to be bipartisan. We want it to be bipartisan, but in the Senate, you need 60 votes," she said.
