Lawmakers will basically have to start from square one on how to pay for a stalled Covid aid package

[brooklynite]

Politico

What's going on: The Senate's bipartisan $10 billion Covid funding deal will need to be totally renegotiated, aides and senators expect, because some of the money laid out to pay for it has already been spent.

"They're trying to see whether they can sort out acceptable offsets with the Republicans," Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told POLITICO about the Covid fund standoff.

A Democratic aide familiar with the state of play said that "most" of the previous funds that were going pay for the deal had "expired" since the agreement was announced in early April.

But don't count on the Senate to pick up the scraps. The aide said Senate Democrats are not going to take the lead to figure out how to pay for the Covid aid package for a third time.

"Senate Dems and Schumer aren't considering another negotiation on offsets. They already did two of them — one blocked by House Ds and the other by Senate Rs. It’s up to Pelosi and McConnell now," the aide said.

[MichMan]

1. I dont understand why the states were allowed to spend billions of it on stuff unrelated to Covid