Returning Unspent COVID Funds Act

Key Points

• This bill would cancel (“take back”) any leftover, uncommitted money from several major COVID relief laws passed in 2020–2021.
• It targets only money that has not been promised or set aside yet, which could shrink the pool of funding some programs were expecting to use later.
• The bill lets the President block the cut for specific programs if, within 60 days after the bill becomes law, the President sends Congress a national security waiver notice.
• Any money taken back would stay in the Treasury’s general fund and could only be used to reduce the federal deficit, not for new programs.