U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (center) at 200 Orange St. Monday.
New Haven’s long-time U.S. Congresswoman has recovered from a recent bout of Covid-19 — and, in her high-ranking role as House Appropriations Committee chair, is gearing up for three months of “nonstop” hearings on the president’s proposed budget.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro offered that update Monday morning during an interview with the Independent at the municipal office building at 200 Orange St.
The interview took place right after DeLauro had finished hosting a roundtable conversation about a $2 million federal grant she had secured for the city’s non-cop crisis response initiative.
It also came roughly two weeks after New Haven’s 16-term incumbent and powerful chair of the federal legislature’s Appropriations Committee was temporarily sidelined with Covid-19.
DeLauro’s positive test on March 12 caused her to miss the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and delay celebratory press conferences about “community projects” — previously known as earmarks — that she had secured funding for in the $1.5 trillion spending bill President Biden signed into law earlier this month. (As the head of the Appropriations Committee, DeLauro played a key role in crafting that bill and shepherding it through Congress.)
These 16 days later, however, Covid was in the rearview — and DeLauro’s typically energetic advocacy for the Third District back on full display. She’d been back in action already for a week.
How did her bout with Covid go?
“The first couple of days were rough” and included a fever and sore throat, said DeLauro, who is 79. She didn’t have any respiratory issues, she said, and didn’t need to go to the hospital or “anything like that.”
“After a couple of days,” she said, the fever and sore throat and other symptoms were gone.
DeLauro stressed that she is fully vaccinated and boosted.
What’s going on in the world of the Appropriations Committee now?
Well, earlier on Monday, President Biden unveiled a proposed $5.8 trillion budget fiscal year 2023. That means that DeLauro has to “start the appropriations process all over again.
This Thursday, she said, an Appropriations Committee subcommittee that DeLauro also chairs will host a budget hearing with the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. That will be followed by subcommittee-hosted budget hearings with the secretaries of the Department of Education and the Department of Labor in the coming weeks.
All 12 of the Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee are now “beginning the process of budget hearings. All will do individual hearings on various issues,” she said. And all 12 have to have their various budget bills done by July.
That means, “between now and then, it will be nonstop.”
Later Monday morning, DeLauro’s office released an email press release offering a first take on Biden’s proposed budget.
“From investments in our police and law enforcement to fight crime and keep our communities safe to creating jobs and lowering health care costs,” DeLauro is quoted as saying in that press release, “President Biden’s spending plan represents an economic vision for America that middle-class families need.”
See her full statement below.
DeLauro Statement on President Biden’s FY2023 Discretionary Funding Request
Earlier this month we passed federal spending bills that show just how government can deliver for working people once again. With the enactment of that legislation, we are helping students pay for the high cost of education and giving hard-working families a better chance to own their homes. We are confronting climate change and putting Americans back to work by creating jobs across the country, helping small businesses, and rebuilding our infrastructure. I am confident that we can build off the success of the investments we are making in 2022 to create a government that builds a fairer economy, corrects years of chronic underinvestment, and meets the needs of working people, not the top one percent.
Working people across the country are struggling to pay their bills and living paycheck-to-paycheck. From investments in our police and law enforcement to fight crime and keep our communities safe to creating jobs and lowering health care costs, President Biden’s spending plan represents an economic vision for America that middle-class families need.
With the proposed minimum tax on the wealthiest Americans, this plan will help fight inflation and cut costs for working families while growing the workforce, continuing to rebuild our roads, bridges, and airports, and combatting climate change. The request invests in our next generation by providing an increase for high-poverty schools and funding to help families afford high-quality child care. It will make our communities healthier with funding to help end the opioid crisis and significant new spending to bolster the Veterans health care program.
I look forward to reviewing this budget, hearing from cabinet secretaries starting this week, and examining my colleagues’ requests so that we can respond to the needs of our communities with the same transparency and opportunity for input that governed the process last year. Just like the package we successfully passed earlier this month that finally pulled us out from under the previous administration’s budget, we must work together to get our spending bills over the finish line — no one chamber or party can do it alone.
I’m glad that Representative DeLauro is feeling better but what about the money Congress cut from the budget to help fight Covid, namely money for uninsured people to get tested, treated, and vaccinated, and for the federal government to order more vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and treatment pills? Already Quest is no longer testing uninsured for free and I read chain pharmacies are figuring out what to do. I do hope Yale-NH, the FQHC centers, and the state DPH test sites continue to test the uninsured. President Biden’s vision of people walking into a pharmacy, testing positive for Covid, and walking out with Pavloxid can’t come to fruition if uninsured people can’t get tested for free at the pharmacy and there’s no Pavloxid to be had for anyone regardless of insurance status or ability to pay.
Representative DeLauro had a safety net to fight Covid that not all her constituents enjoy including good health insurance and the ability to work remotely.
Also, I would like to see more money and attention spent on long researching how to treat and cure long Covid, something DeLauro, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, et al. may be concerned about as they were recently infected.