The White House allowed a reporter just one supervised hour to review the 385-page binder, after Psaki said it would be made available.
The Biden administration restricted access to a 385-page binder summarizing its Covid-related spending to date, according to a new report from the healthcare news site STAT.
After boasting at the briefing podium that reporters could “have access to this for a prop if you would like it,” and promising to “make copies” for them earlier this month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki went back on her word after STAT requested access to the included documents.
WH Press Sec. Jen Psaki holds up a 385-page binder explaining the need for more COVID funding to Congress, following the Senate blocking debate on a $10B COVID relief bill:
“You can have access to this for a prop if you would like it as well, we’ll make copies for you.” pic.twitter.com/CffwjoKP38
— The Recount (@therecount) April 6, 2022
Instead of providing a copy, or allowing the outlet to take photographs of the original, the administration offered just one hour of supervised access to the binder.
The STAT report noted that “White House officials offered the review in a small conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street from the White House, under the supervision of a budget office employee,” and critiqued the substance of the binder, observing that “documents that could have better illuminated the White House’s spending strategy were left out.”
Specifically, it omitted required spending plans that were supposed to have been sent to Congress every two months, and details of transfers between accounts. The White House cited previous spending disclosures made to lawmakers in a defense of its efforts to make public how its spent billions of dollars in allocated funds.
According to STAT, the documents also reveal that the White House was running low on funding to combat Covid at the start of 2022, even as then-White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients promised “we have the money that we need to fight Omicron.” Spending on therapeutics had already slowed down at the time of Zients’s statement, as the administration sought to stretch the shelf-life of its of its funds on-hand.
A bipartisan Covid-spending bill totaling about $10 billion that would include more transparency and disclosure requirements is currently being negotiated in Congress. The White House has offered STAT the opportunity to view the documents again at a later date.