SOMERSET, Mass. (Washington Insider Magazine) – The Biden office has warned that its bureau for dealing with the health implications of climate change lacks funding as deadly heat waves sweep throughout the globe.
In order to prepare the country’s health care system for dealing with the rising and inevitable health implications of severe heat, deteriorating air quality, and dangerous storms, President Joe Biden established the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity within the Health and Human Services Department in his first year in office. The Biden administration requested Congress for $3 million, a tiny amount when compared to the federal government’s multi-trillion dollar budget, to hire eight people for the office.
Even though the unforgiving summer temperatures make the threats to human health extremely clear, Congress has never provided funding for the office, leaving the budding agency with an unpredictable future, lacking dedicated funding, and dependent on a rotating roster of employees loaned from other governmental departments: In Portugal and Spain alone, this heat wave has claimed over 2,000 lives.
The department’s empty bank account is the most recent evidence of how Biden’s hands are essentially tied even if he pledges to utilize all of his executive authority to address global warming if the Senate won’t.
Senator Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a pivotal vote, stated last week that he wouldn’t support broad climate legislation unless statistics in the coming months indicate inflation is improving. As a result, the bill was defeated in the Senate. The failure of that initiative, which had previously been scaled back multiple times, was the most recent and perhaps fatal blow to Biden’s plan for reducing emissions and global warming.
On Wednesday, Biden went to a former coal factory in Somerset, Massachusetts, which had been transformed into a manufacturing center for the offshore wind power business, in an effort to demonstrate that he is acting independently whenever feasible. In addition to plans to enable the first American offshore wind turbines in the Gulf of Mexico, he announced $2.3 billion in financing from FEMA to assist localities in preparing for excessive heat.
According to a spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee, House Democrats have backed the administration’s demand for $3 million for the climate health department, including the funds in a budget plan for the 2023 fiscal year that cleared a crucial committee.
However, it’s uncertain if the financing will pass in the Senate. The climate office would once again lack funds if Congress chose to support the government on a temporary basis by adopting a short-term extension of the existing budget. The agency has been partnering with government organizations that offer medical services, such as the Indian Health Service, the VA, and the military, to build resilience to global warming, according to Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine, a physician, in an interview with NBC News. In accordance with Biden’s ambitions for the whole economy, the office is also pressuring hospitals and pharmaceutical corporations to decarbonize by urging them to pledge to a 50% reduction in emissions by the end of the decade.
