Rantz: Washington state misused COVID funds, now complains it’s being taken away

Washington Democrats decried the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Trump administration for cutting grants to health programs. But you’re not getting the full story.

Attorney General Nick Brown joined a coalition of 24 states this week in suing the HHS and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for terminating billions in public health grants to the states. Brown, in a statement, said Washington will lose $159 million from the grant cancellations.

What Brown and left-wing media outlets are leaving out is that the funds in question were for COVID-19 pandemic-related programs. The state of Washington just kept using federal funds for other purposes.

The cut funds were for COVID-19, but Washington used them elsewhere

In a statement to “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH, a Washington Department of Health (WA-DOH) spokesperson acknowledged that the grants targeted are “pandemic-related grants.”

“This funding has been essential in supporting critical public health systems, including disease monitoring, reporting, and vaccine efforts for COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses,” the spokesperson explained.

Washington Democrats and the WA-DOH say the cuts put critical health programs in deep jeopardy. Perhaps. But it’s 2025. We’re years passed the COVID-19 pandemic, so why would the state continue to receive or expect COVID-related grant dollars?

Here are some COVID programs that lost funding

You may support how the dollars are being spent, but they’re not going towards their intended purposes.

For example, $20 million in funding for COVID-19 vaccine immunizations was rescinded. This impacts 46 full-time employees that we’re supposed to pretend are hard at work offering COVID-19 vaccines to the public. Another $3 million was cut from initiatives to address COVID-19 health disparities among high-risk and underserved populations. COVID-19 has developed into a cold. This is not necessary.

All these programs were pushed into work well outside of the COVID-19 pandemic. And they may be worthy of funding. But the state should pay for it itself or apply for relevant grants from the federal government.

Washington was misusing funds

The pandemic is long over. These funds are no longer necessary, yet the state kept accepting the funds as if they would be here forever.

You can argue that the mechanism by which the funds were cut is illegal. Perhaps it is. But the public is being sold misinformation from Democrats and their media allies.

They’ll have you think that it’s the Trump administration that’s stealing from health programs when the reality is that it was the WA-DOH that was effectively stealing from the federal government.

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