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Congress is prepared to provide the second installment of the $7.1 billion that President Bush requested last year to prepare the country for a potential outbreak of the pandemic flu, key lawmakers said Tuesday, but first they want assurances from public health officials about how existing flu-readiness funds are being used.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said lawmakers would include the remaining $3.3 billion requested by the administration as part of a supplemental spending bill expected in March or April. Last year, Congress provided $3.8 billion of Bush's $7.1 billion request in the fiscal 2006 Defense spending bill, and promised the rest of the money at a later date.

"You will get the balance of the money early this year, if we get the assurance that putting it up will make a difference," Stevens told public health officials at a hearing today before the Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee on avian flu readiness.

Stevens and other subcommittee members worried that the liability protections accorded to companies under the last flu-funding legislation were not working to encourage U.S. companies to get back into vaccine production. Stevens pressed John Agwunobi, assistant HHS secretary for health, to describe how companies had reacted to the liability shield.

When Agwunobi demurred, saying that HHS had not fully gauged their reaction, Stevens protested that they were not moving quickly enough.

Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations ranking member Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said that compensating individuals who might be harmed by a flu vaccine or treatment should be as much a priority as providing liability protection to companies. The funds Congress appropriated last year were accompanied by a provision directing HHS to establish a compensation system, although no funds were provided.

"If we don't have a compensation package, what does that say?" Harkin asked, suggesting that a lack of assurance of compensation would deter people from getting vaccinated. Labor-HHS Appropriations Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., reassured Harkin that lawmakers were in agreement that both liability protection and compensation for victims were needed.

In general, though, Specter indicated that flu preparedness actions were lagging, and urged the officials to maintain a sense of urgency in their efforts. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerberding told the panel that vaccine production would be at full speed in four to five years, and that the government would have enough antivirals to treat 25 percent of the population by 2008.

"That is not a satisfactory situation," Specter said.