For Immediate Release: July 21, 2022
Contact: Kevin Gerson, kgerson@skdknick.com

Washington, DC — President Biden's call on Congress to provide funds to jump-start the new Financial Intermediary Fund, in order to prepare for future pandemics, is a needed step toward strengthening global health. This action should not take precedence over addressing the current pandemic and ongoing global economic crises. COVID-19 has caused an unprecedented economic hardship and more than 6 million confirmed deaths worldwide – the actual death toll is estimated to be as much as three times that number. The stress on the health care system in the U.S. and around the world has been pushed to the brink of failure. Rising food and fuel prices as a result of the war in Ukraine have further compounded this dire situation.

Additional immediate financial support to address the myriad of significant issues, including expanding global testing and COVID-19 vaccination efforts, and increasing social spending to address food insecurity, is available and could be approved quickly if the Biden Administration were to support, as it did last year, efforts to enable the InternationalMonetary Fund to release a new allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). This aid has zero cost to the US budget or U.S. taxpayers.

The previous allocation had very important positive results and proved that SDRs worked as intended. The Center for Economic Policy and Research published a report in April that found that the $650 billion IMF allocation of SDRs has already benefited developing countries hit by the pandemic and world recession, saving possibly hundreds of thousands of lives. Indeed, SDRs have proven to be a valuable financial tool to enable nations to address the damage caused by the pandemic more quickly, including tackling health care needs and rebuilding their economies. This also helped strengthen the U.S. economy and it created jobs here, as economic recovery in the rest of the world helped recover some of the estimated 2 million export-related jobs lost as the global economy went into the COVID recession. It also helps protect Americans’ health, since COVID variants, for example, develop more among unvaccinated populations.

To this continued health emergency, the rising cost of living generated by the surge in food and energy prices is expected to push 71 million more people into extreme poverty. Worldwide, 150 million more people are going hungry now than at the start of the pandemic.

SDRs are a global economic insurance policy, and it's time to use them to their fullest potential. Without the U.S.’s leadership to transition the COVID-19 pandemic to an endemic, the U.S. and nations will face much larger and more persistent social and economic problems for years to come. We call on President Biden to support a new allocation of SDRs to help nations – especially low- and middle-income countries – provide the health care and other social and economic initiatives necessary to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

Signed,

Action Corps
Demand Progress
Center for Economic and Policy Research
Sisters of Mercy of the Americas — Justice Team

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