Rep. Comer pushes Biden admin on millions of dollars shifted from vaccine efforts to housing migrant children

FIRST ON FOX: Rep. James Comer, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, is pushing the Biden administration for information about a move in August to shift money from COVID-19 vaccination efforts to programs to house unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border -- asking whether it exacerbated pandemic-related challenges.

Comer, R-Ky., wrote to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra and acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young to ask for documents and other information about a move to transfer money earmarked for vaccine "planning, distribution, monitoring and tracking" to caring for the surge in unaccompanied children arriving at the southern border.

HHS DIVERTING MILLIONS IN FUNDING MARKED FOR VACCINE EFFORTS TO HOUSING MIGRANT CHILDREN 

"The Biden administration did not adequately prepare for another surge in COVID-19 cases and diverted critical pandemic funding to pay for President Biden’s self-made border crisis," Comer writes to Becerra. "This mismanagement of taxpayer dollars has contributed to the Biden administration’s failed COVID-19 response."

Fox News first reported in August that HHS had informed Congress that it was diverting $225 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding that was part of the December COVID-19 relief bill to the unaccompanied children (UAC) program, as well as $364 million in HHS funding that was passed as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP).

Of the ARP funding, $187.5 million had been marked for the Centers for Disease Control for "vaccine planning, distribution, monitoring and tracking" and an additional $25 million for "vaccine confidence activities." Meanwhile, $151 million of the diverted funding had been tagged for the "Supply Chain for Vaccines, Therapeutics and Medical Supplies."

According to the data provided to Fox News, $1.2 billion had already been transferred to the program in April, including $850 million from the December relief supplemental. In May, $850 million was moved from ARP funding designated for testing, tracing and COVID-19 mitigation.

The August move came amid a surge in migrants, including unaccompanied children at the border. There were more than 212,000 migrant encounters in July, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was encountering over 1,000 children a day -- who were then being processed into HHS care.

In his letter to OMB, Comer cites statistics showing HHS received 122,000 unaccompanied children in FY 2021, and at the peak of the crisis had over 22,000 children in custody.

That move also took place just a few months before the omicron variant emerged, which has so far caused havoc in a number of states and saw the re-implementation of some COVID-19 restrictions.

MIGRANT ENCOUNTERS INCREASED AGAIN AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER IN DECEMBER: COURT DOCS

HHS told Fox News in August that the amounts being transferred were not planned for any ongoing vaccine activities, and that there was therefore no impact on the administration's vaccination efforts. A spokesperson also said that the Trump administration had left behind an under-resourced UAC program with less than half of the capacity needed, and failed to activate additional bed capacity in 2020 even as numbers of unaccompanied children coming to the border began to increase in the latter half of the year.

"The Unaccompanied Children program has long relied on funding transfers to meet its mission, and this year faces the additional expense of rebuilding a decimated system while taking pandemic-related safety precautions, such as testing and social distancing," an HHS spokesperson told Fox News. 

"We notified Congress on Aug. 16 of our intent to make additional funds available to the program to cover pandemic-related cost increases and to ensure the continued health and safety of children and staff, and will ensure this transfer – as with prior ones – does not disrupt other HHS activities," the spokesperson said. "We also continue to call on Congress to invest in long-needed programmatic reforms to decrease the program’s long-standing reliance on funding transfers and reduce the time it takes to unify children with families."

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In his letter to the two agencies Comer requests "more information on these budget transfers within HHS, the legal authority on which they were based, as well as any analysis of the impact of those budget transfers on the administration’s COVID-19 response."

While the numbers at the border have decreased since the summer, they are still significantly higher than the prior year. CBP officially released its December border numbers on Monday -- showing 178,840 encounters in December, a slight increase over November, but significantly higher than the 73,994 encountered in December 2020.