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President JOE BIDEN owes much of his success in beating back the Covid crisis to the highly effective vaccines manufactured by drug maker Moderna. But when Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.) lit into Moderna’s CEO at a congressional hearing Wednesday, few in Biden’s administration rushed to the company’s defense.

The White House’s relationship with Moderna has deteriorated dramatically over the last two years, marring what should have been one of the most successful public-private partnerships in U.S. history, four people with knowledge of the matter told West Wing Playbook.

The two sides fought repeatedly over the price the government should pay for Moderna’s vaccines. They also clashed over the company’s responsibility to ensure that low-income people in the U.S. and abroad have access to the shots.

Inside the administration, Biden officials openly complained about Moderna’s hardball negotiation tactics and characterized its representatives as difficult to deal with.

“Moderna was always slow — and occasionally highly arrogant,” said one of the people with knowledge of the matter. “They don’t always get it.”

A spokesperson defended Moderna’s work during the pandemic, saying in a statement that “we value our relationship with the U.S. government” and would look for future opportunities to collaborate. CEO STÉPHANE BANCEL in his congressional testimony thanked the government for its support, and said out of appreciation it had provided its vaccines so far at a “discount” — though he noted “we were under no obligation to do so.”

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

At the center of the White House’s disputes with Moderna is a disagreement over how indebted the company should be to the government for help it got in developing the Covid vaccine. Moderna received an estimated $1.7 billion in federal funds to accelerate the creation of its initial shot. The resulting vaccine offered the U.S. a path out of the pandemic — and represented Moderna’s first and only working product.

The company has since recorded more than $36 billion in sales. Bancel’s own net worth is estimated at $4.7 billion.

Yet despite the government’s investment, Biden officials say Moderna has barely reciprocated in kind. In one episode in 2021, after the president vowed to make the U.S. an “arsenal of vaccines” for the world, Moderna resisted repeated overtures to commit additional doses to help lower-income countries. The administration eventually went public with the battle.

“We expect that Moderna will step up as a company,” DAVID KESSLER, the then-chief science officer for the Covid response, said during an October 2021 global vaccination panel. “Failure to do that would be unconscionable in my view.”

Moderna maintained throughout that it had limited capacity and needed to fulfill existing commitments first. The company eventually pledged to send more doses, though by the time they were ready to ship, the organizations charged with distribution to lower-income countries declined the vaccine over lack of demand and storage capabilities.

A spokesperson said Moderna was ultimately forced to write down all the costs related to the declined donation. But Biden officials came away convinced Moderna’s initial reluctance was at least partly because it meant selling doses at a lower price.

The administration’s difficulties with Moderna resurfaced last summer, as health officials began finalizing plans for updated Covid vaccines. The administration initially wanted to announce its purchase of new shots from Moderna and competitor Pfizer at the same time, two of the people with knowledge of the matter said.

But Moderna initially demanded a far higher price than Pfizer, drawing out negotiations and forcing officials to scrap the joint rollout.

Further frustrating federal negotiators, Moderna at one point also pressured them to purchase a vaccine that it had already made to target Covid’s original Omicron strain — even though health officials wanted shots tailored to fight more recent versions of the Omicron variant. Moderna eventually relented.

Those run-ins have left Biden officials with little sympathy for Moderna amid rising scrutiny over its plans to hike the price of its Covid vaccine by as much as 400 percent when it hits the private market.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Bancel defended the price and reiterated his earlier pledge that uninsured people will get free access to the vaccine. But more than a month after making that promise, he still did not offer details on how exactly he plans to fulfill it.

“It’s irritating, because they play games all the time,” said one senior administration official. “We should all just act like adults.”

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With help from the White House Historical Association

Which first lady favored incorporating local and seasonal flowers into White House floral arrangements?

(Answer at bottom.)

AVOID AT ALL COSTS: With the potential indictment of former President DONALD TRUMP looming, Biden, assuming he runs for reelection, “would likely become the first presidential candidate whose main rival is challenging him from underneath the dark cloud of a criminal proceeding,” The Daily Beast’s SAM BRODEY reports. “For now, there’s agreement that Biden and his White House team should not touch the indictment with a 130,000-foot pole to avoid politicizing the proceedings.”

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece from USA Today’s RACHEL LOOKER and CANDY WOODALL about how the “clock is ticking” for House Republicans to present a rebuttal to Biden’s budget proposal. The authors write that House majority leaders “did not respond to multiple questions from USA TODAY about when the GOP budget would be ready.” Assistant press secretary ROBYN PATTERSON shared the article on Twitter.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This piece by NBC News’ REBECCA SHABAD and JULIE TSIRKIN about how a new congressional report found that “children’s medication, antibiotics and treatment for ADHD are among a number of drugs that have been in short supply in recent months.” The report found that the medication shortages are only getting worse and that “neither the federal government nor the pharmaceutical industry has the capability to assess the full supply chain.”

SOMETHING ELSE THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO READ: The Boston Globe’s JEFF JACOBY argues that Biden should replace Vice President KAMALA HARRIS as his running mate should he run for reelection. “If there is a potential political downside to choosing a new running mate, the potential upside is arguably greater.”

SHOULD THEY OR SHOULDN’T THEY: JACK SCHAFER writes about presidential endorsements from scientific journals for POLITICO Magazine. It was a step some journals took for the first time in the 2020 election, and it resulted in further distrust from some readers. “Why bother editorializing?” Jack writes. “Doesn’t seem very scientific.”

We’ll see what 2024 has in store!

THE DOD’S NEXT WAR: As Defense Department officials prepare to defend their budget proposal, they’re also readying responses to Republican attacks on the agency’s “woke” policies — like diversity training and racial justice education, our LARA SELIGMAN, LEE HUDSON and CONNOR O’BRIEN report.

Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. MARK MILLEY is “an information guy, so he has binders and binders full of information about how the military trains and prepares for combat,” said his spokesperson, Col. DAVID BUTLER. “Wokeness doesn’t fit into that equation. Working together as a fighting unit regardless of your race, color or gender does.”

ONE STEP FORWARD, THREE STEPS BACK: Consideration of the nomination of PHIL WASHINGTON to lead the Federal Aviation Administration was delayed Wednesday, our ALEX DAUGHERTY reports for Pro subscribers. Although the Senate Commerce Committee had teed up a hearing that could have moved Washington’s nomination forward, the committee’s chair, MARIA CANTWELL (D-Wash.), said it would be considered “at a later date” with no further explanation.

PERSONNEL MOVES: NICK SIMMONS is now deputy chief of staff to Connecticut Gov. NED LAMONT, DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. He most recently was senior adviser to the secretary of Education.

BYE BYE ASSIGNMENT RESTRICTIONS: The State Department announced Wednesday it’s doing away with a policy that issued “assignment restrictions for diplomats as a condition of security clearance,” Lippman also reports. The restrictions, which some Democrats called discriminatory, “were primarily used to prevent foreign intelligence agencies from targeting or harassing diplomats working on issues in countries they had immigrated from or had family or financial relationships with.”

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General released a report Wednesday that said the executive order Biden issued in January 2021 phasing out the DOJ’s use of private prisons could cost taxpayers more money and, in some cases, isn’t actually ending private prison contracts.

The OIG found that the U.S. Marshals Service, in an effort to comply with the executive order, did not renew a contract with a private company to house detainees at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center and instead contracted with the local government. But that local government turned around and contracted with the exact same private contractor — costing the federal government as much as $6 million more per year and leaving the marshals with less direct oversight than previously.

Six months in, the Inflation Reduction Act is already unleashing clean energy’s potential (Bob Keefe for The Hill Opinion)

Joe Biden’s Push to Counter China Steers EV Investments to Canada (WSJ’s Vipal Monga)

Scranton to Biden: Love ya, Joe. But a 2024 run? (Reuters’ Jarrett Renshaw)

When a friend threw a party in the summer of 2021 for Commerce Secretary GINA RAIMONDO to celebrate her getting the Cabinet job, she went straight to work — no really, she set up a room at the party to work.

Raimondo and some aides “holed up for hours negotiating the broadband portion of the infrastructure bill with lawmakers” at the house party, Bloomberg’s JENNY LEONARD and ERIC MARTIN report.

Raimondo called it “a classic Gina moment,” adding she was only “mildly embarrassed” about it.

First lady JACQUELINE KENNEDY asked for the branches of the White House crab apple and cherry trees to be brought indoors and incorporated into arrangements after they bloomed.

A CALL OUT — Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it.

Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.