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May 18, 2016 at 06:39 AM
(Bloomberg) — House and Senate Republicans can’t get on the same page when it comes to fighting the Zika virus — and Democrats are pouncing.
The Senate, on a 68-29 vote, advanced $1.1 billion of the administration’s $1.9 billion emergency request Tuesday, with Republicans trying to get past the politically charged issue before mosquito season begins in earnest in the continental U.S.
House Republicans, however, facing pressure from conservatives, aren’t going along with a plan to bypass spending caps for Zika.
House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky instead unveiled a $622 million package of his own, paid for by cutting other health spending, including to combat the deadly Ebola virus. His plan immediately had Democrats and some Republicans crying foul.
“We can quite frankly do much better than what the House is proposing,” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said Tuesday on the Senate floor.
The Obama administration threatened a veto of Rogers’ measure, saying in a statement the amount was “woefully inadequate” and that funds for Ebola shouldn’t be cut to pay for it.
The National Institutes of Health is close to running out of the money it needs to develop a Zika vaccine and may not be able to begin testing early next year without more funding, the head of its infectious disease program told Bloomberg BNA in an interview Tuesday.
See also: Could Zika paralyze hundreds of U.S. adults?
“We’re really running out of time,” Anthony Fauci said. “If we don’t get the money soon, then we’re really going to have to start modifying our plans.”
Battleground Florida
Even if House and Senate Republicans were on the same page it could take months to get the broader spending package to the president’s desk. The amount of money at stake could be dwarfed by the political blowback should the virus take hold in key election battleground states like Florida later this year.
“Why take the chance that you’re going to have to go home in August and September and explain to millions of people across this country why are so many Americans being infected by this and you were low-balling our approach to it a few months ago?” Rubio asked his colleagues.
The Florida Republican is backing the full $1.9 billion Obama administration request and has repeatedly taken his colleagues to task for slow-walking the matter.
“This is a public health emergency that cannot wait for this extended debate on this issue,” Rubio said.
‘Totally Inadequate’
Democrats also torched the House plan.
“Totally inadequate,” Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the heir apparent to Minority Leader Harry Reid, said in an interview in the Capitol. “It doesn’t have enough to fight Zika and it robs Peter to pay Paul.”
“That’s not acceptable,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the Democrat who negotiated the $1.1 billion compromise package with Republican Roy Blunt of Missouri and also pushed unsuccessfully for the full $1.9 billion request in a separate vote. “That doesn’t get us to what we need. It’s irresponsible,” she said of the House bill, adding that the money should be treated as emergency spending that doesn’t require offsetting cuts.
See also: Zika virus does cause birth defects
