Rep. Pence: Do 'whatever it takes' on coronavirus funding

Rep. Greg Pence (R-Ind.) said Thursday that the federal government should do "whatever it takes" to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. — including additional restrictions on travel from China, where the deadly virus started.

“I think we should take a look at everything,” the lawmaker told Just the News. “This is not a partisan issue. You know, it's not something that needs to turn into politics like some of the folks have done." 

Pence, the brother of Vice President Mike Pence, spoke amid a bipartisan brushfire sparked by how the Trump administration and its coronavirus task force have responded to the virus outbreak around the world, including 59 confirmed cases in the U.S.  

Congressional Democrats have criticized the president for requesting too little money, being too slow to address the public with a televised White House event, banning some inbound air travel from China, and appointing the vice president as coronavirus czar.

"I'm not going to stoop down to anything like that,” Pence said during the second day of the Conservative Political Action Conference, outside of Washington, D.C. “Everybody needs to pull together and get together and do whatever we can. I'm not real sure that banning [travel] just from China is the only thing we should be looking at.”

On the issue of whether the administration’s request for roughly $1.8 billion in emergency funding, including over $500 million from an Ebola preparedness fund, was sufficient, Pence said that when Republicans controlled the House, they had such a fund for an emergency situation like this one. 

“And there's billions of dollars in there right now,” he continued. “I think we need to do whatever needs to be done, whatever it takes. And I feel pretty confident the administration and Congress, myself included, will fund it to whatever level we need to fund it.”