House Speaker Nancy Pelosi grew frustrated with a reporter who repeatedly asked her about Covid relief aid as she reminded him that 'people are dying' in Ukraine.
'This'll be your third time,' the California Democrat told NBC News and Punchbowl journalist Jake Sherman when he said that he wanted to ask about Covid relief aid, which was left out of the 2022 budget bill.
'It's substantive you like substantive questions,' Sherman said.
'Yeah, well, people are dying in Ukraine and all of that, you know,' Pelosi said. 'People are dying of Covid, too,' Sherman shot back.
Pelosi told reporters that she advised the Biden administration to ask for double what they originally sought - as much as $45 billion for fourth booster and variant-specific vaccines, therapeutics and testing.
'What I've said to the administration is: You must ask for more,' she said. 'We want it to be bipartisan, we need it to be paid for. So let's just go for a bigger chunk. I think they should be double what they asked for, because even when they were asking for like 20-some [billion dollars] it was only going to get us to June,' Pelosi said.
She again insisted that the cost of the relief needed to be 'offset.'
'The last thing we need is another variant,' Pelosi said. 'The resources that we would have had in the bill I think need to be enhanced now because we're another week later and we still don't have it.'
Still, Pelosi said that most of her conversations with the White House over the past week have been about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi grew frustrated with a reporter who repeatedly asked her about Covid relief aid as she reminded him that 'people are dying' in Ukraine
The White House originally asked Congress to include $22.5 billion in funding to fight the ongoing pandemic, but that number was slashed to $15.6 billion after negotiations between Republicans and Democrats
The White House originally asked Congress to include $22.5 billion in funding to fight the ongoing pandemic, but that number was slashed to $15.6 billion after negotiations between Republicans and Democrats.
Many Republicans still questioned whether any money was necessary at all, claiming there were leftover funds from previous Covid measures that had yet to be used. Then, a number of House Democrats - and governors - balked at the plan to repurpose $7 billion in leftover state Covid funds from the American Rescue Plan.
The relief funding was ultimately left out of the budget, which
