There is an active movement to block "billions of dollars" worth of Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC) funding for contact tracing and virus testing from the White House, according to a Washington Post article.

The CDC funding is expected to be a part of the next round of stimulus spending.

According to a CNN report, some Senate Republicans want more money for contact tracing. But the Post reported that White House officials are persuading them to remove more CDC funding.

The White House argued that there is still enough CDC funding to do contact tracing from the March stimulus.

The White House request reportedly stirred "anger" among GOP senators, and some of them have pushed back and stood by the funding to stay in the bill, said Forbes.

The specifics of the stimulus are expected to be revealed next week so the discussions done as of now are preliminary. According to CNN's source from GOP, funding distribution is still a "moving target" among the party.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell kept details of the bill unknown so far.

Democrats in the White House have passed a relief package at the end of May. McConnell stressed that the bill would "go nowhere" in the Republican-controlled Senate, The Hill reported.

The House and Senate lawmakers don't appear to have come close to agreeing upon a package.

CDC has enough funding

The administration believed the CDC has enough funding now, and there should be enough money from the past phases of relief packages to deal with coronavirus efforts.

They don't have plans to double or triple the money to be given to CDC and other activities and programs that still have funding.

The discussion with the administration is going towards guiding the resources to where they are going to be most needed.

An administration official said there is no move of "blocking" of funds that will take place in the fourth phase of the stimulus funding. But the administration believes it is for the best to request certain amounts of money for individual agencies.

How much funding will there be?

The Senate GOP wants to allocate $25 billion for states to do virus testing and contact tracing, but some officials want to remove the testing and tracing of money altogether.

The administration is looking at taking out $10 billion in the new CDC funding.

The White House also wants to take out billions of dollars for the Pentagon and the State Department. This is so they can better combat the pandemic both on a domestic and international level.

Coronavirus in the US

On Friday, the U.S. reported about 76,000 new virus cases. This is a record number that was added by another 70,831 new cases on Saturday, reported New York Times.

Only a few states have required masks with strict implementation for its residents to follow.

As per John Hopkins' research, nearly 3.7 million Americans tested positive for the COVID-19. Meanwhile, testing for the virus takes four to six days to have its results ready.

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