The $1.1 billion – passed by a 68-29 vote in the Senate – fell short of President Barack Obama’s request but faces resistance in the Republican-led House of Representatives, which has proposed just $622 million cobbled together from other programs, including those intended for Ebola.
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Earlier on Tuesday, $1.9 billion for Zika funding in the Nelson amendment failed in a vote of 50 to 47, despite support from Marco Rubio, R-Florida, for the bill put forward by Democrat Bill Nelson, D-Florida.
The administration criticized the resolution, known as H.R. 5243, as “woefully inadequate to support the response our public health experts say is needed”. The Senate ended debate on the amendment Tuesday and by rule will have to wait up to 30 hours before formally approving it. The $1.1 billion would fund the fight against the virus through next September, at which time a Zika vaccine could be available, Blunt said.
USA lawmakers are hours away from casting their first votes on funding to combat the Zika virus, months after top heath officials warned the mosquito-borne disease could spread through large swaths of the nation.
The WHO’s European office said that if no measures are taken to mitigate the threat, the presence of the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that can carry the virus mean the likelihood of local Zika transmission is moderate in 18 countries in the region.
The measure advanced by the Senate would provide funding to the CDC for domestic and worldwide response to Zika and to the National Institutes of Health for vaccine research, as well as funding to help affected countries reduce the spread of the virus.
The other two Senate options would fund the Zika efforts at $1.1 billion, the difference between them being that one bill includes an offset to pay for the funding, taking the money from the Affordable Care Act.
The Obama administration, at the urging of congressional Republicans, is already using $589 million in unspent Ebola funds to fight Zika.
House Republicans, however, facing pressure from conservatives, aren’t going along with a plan to bypass spending caps for Zika.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., voted for the second and the third options, while SC junior U.S. senator, Republican Tim Scott, only voted for the second proposal.
Although Republicans in both chambers are anxious about the coming public health crisis and say they want to move the funding quickly, House GOP leaders are sticking with their long-held stance that the cost of emergency funding for health and weather disasters should be offset.
All of the region’s cases – and the state’s – are travel related, the state noted in Tuesday’s daily Zika virus update. The team also fed mosquitoes with either the parental Zika virus and the clone virus and found that the number of infected mosquitoes were similar. The White House issued a veto threat Tuesday.
“The more we learn about Zika, the more anxious we get about it”, Chan continued. John Cornyn of Texas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, would provide $1.1 billion that would be offset by cuts to Obamacare’s Prevention and Public Health Fund – an option that Democrats are sure to reject.
“One of the amendments is sponsored by myself and Senator Nelson for the full $1.9 billion”, Rubio added. “In fact, human beings pretty much are its only source of blood meal”, he said. “The way it impacts unborn children alone should call us to action”, he said.
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“Let’s not be penny wise and pound foolish”, said Sen.
