The fiscal system of the United States exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States makes decisions about how to allocate resources using a fiscal system that assumes a baseline of private ownership from which Congress may depart by generating “revenue” and appropriating funds to the executive branch to spend for a specific purpose. This chapter describes three aspects of this allocative framework that contributed to the country’s tragic failure to meet the coronavirus challenge. First, scorekeeping, the process for predicting what legislation will “cost” and what it will “save” to meet the political desire to minimize the need to borrow. A decade before the coronavirus pandemic the Affordable Care Act created a significant “Prevention and Public Health Fund,” but as Professor Westmoreland first documented, Congressional scorekeeping rules that treat preventive investment as worthless encouraged Congress to “raid” the fund to spend on purposes other than public health, which it did. Second, Congress’ reliance on short-term appropriations to retain influence over the executive branch. Although essential to the separation of powers, the parasitic power of the purse and its insistence on short-term spending packages repeatedly stymied and hobbled federal relief with short-, medium-, and long-term impacts on the nation’s health and economic wellbeing. Third, the executive’s asymmetric discretion over spending. The president’s discretion to refuse to spend made it possible for President Trump to frustrate the efforts of Congress to continue the country’s support for the World Health Organization by declining to allocate appropriated funds for the organization in the midst of the pandemic.