House, Senate GOP Seals Agreement on $1.1B Zika Measure

Lost in the shuffle of Wednesday night’s dramatic sit-in by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives was passage of legislation setting aside $1.1 billion to prevent the Zika virus.

The measure also has a provision that would block supplemental funds from going to Planned Parenthood for birth control services for women at risk of becoming infected with the Zika virus. President Barack Obama requested $1.9 billion four months ago to fight Zika.

The measure matches a bipartisan $1.1 billion figure adopted by the Senate last month to fight the virus, which can cause grave defects and can be transmitted by mosquitoes and sexual contact. In their view, the upper chamber’s $1.1 billion in emergency funding through 2017 wasn’t as satisfactory as the White House request.

The New York Times reports that a resolution is likely to be delayed until after Congress returns from its Fourth of July recess, which makes total sense. Only a handful of Republican lawmakers – almost all representing Southern states most vulnerable to an outbreak – had said they supported Obama’s full request.

Rogers said his bill, “unlike the administration’s request”, would give more specific charges to the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to fight Zika.

The House was largely satisfied in their demand to pair Zika aid with about $750 million in offsetting cuts to spending, including $543 million in unused funds from implementation of Obama’s health care law and $107 million in cuts to leftover Ebola money. “Phony excuses and made-up objections to the funding we’ve already passed won’t help create a vaccine or eradicate the threat of Zika”.

In May, the House and Senate passed their own plans.

Lawmakers also approved $82.5 billion to train and maintain US military forces, fund veterans programs, and offer housing and services to military families.

“It is a responsible plan that assures the administration will continue to have the needed resources to protect the public”, he said in a statement. He said there’s not enough money in the bill and it diverts too much funding from other critical health priorities, according to the Associated Press.

The measure also contains a watered-down version of a provision backed by the House that would ease rules on pesticide permitting requirements.

But Republicans said that the cuts were in fact relatively innocuous.

While some Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee believed any deal with Republicans would have to have some cuts, party leaders such as Sen.

“If it has all these things that they put in it, all these external poison pills, I don’t see how it would pass”, said Senator Chuck Schumer of NY, the No. 3 Democrat in the chamber.

Senate Democrats are publicly bristling at provisions they say would damage women’s health and the environment.

The veterans funding portion of the measure also contains a modified provision to permit combat veterans whose wounds have left them unable to conceive children to seek in-vitro fertilization treatments. But it would not permit the use of donor eggs and sperm, according to a summary of the measure prepared by Democrats.