The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for COVID-19 testing and tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, Washington Post reported Saturday citing people involved in the talks. 

The administration is also trying to block billions of dollars that GOP senators want to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and billions more for the Pentagon and State Department to address the pandemic at home and abroad.

The administration's posture has angered some GOP senators, officials said, and some lawmakers are trying to push back and ensure that the money stays in the bill. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal confidential deliberations, cautioned that the talks were fluid and the numbers were in flux. 

The number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. now exceeds 3.7 million, and the death toll has surpassed 140,000. Trump has blamed increased testing for the rising number. 

On Tuesday, advisers of Trump and congressional Democrats were set to discuss next steps in responding to the coronavirus crisis, with congressional Republicans saying they were working on a one-trillion-U.S.-dollar relief bill. 

The Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic-led House of Representatives have fewer than two weeks to hammer out a new relief package before enhanced unemployment benefits run out for tens of millions of American workers made jobless by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said the Republican proposal would include a cut to the payroll tax on workers' gross earnings, which funds national retirement programs. Trump backs such a cut as an economic stimulus, but the idea has stirred little enthusiasm among lawmakers, who worry about protecting Social Security payments. 

"We're working and negotiating with the Democrats and trying to get a plan that helps small business, helps people, helps this country," Trump said. 

Donna Shalala, a former health secretary who is now a Democratic representative from Florida, said it made "no sense at all" to block funding to fight coronavirus in the next relief bill. 

"The lack of leadership in the White House and in our governor's office, they simply have not hit this with a hammer, which is what we needed to do, and starve the virus," Shalala told ABC's This Week. 

(With input from Reuters)