Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Sen. Under their proposal, after a federal audit, agencies involved in the response effort would pay half the money back. The other half would be designated as emergency spending and not repaid.
Advertisement
Her campaign did not detail the size of the fund, its annual budget or whether it would be paid for with other government revenue.
Florida’s governor says that state has confirmed five new non-travel-related cases of Zika, including one in the Tampa Bay area, though officials aren’t so far declaring that a zone of active local transmission.
In her statement, Clinton noted that physicians and public-health experts “have been warning for months that the Zika virus was likely to reach the continental United States”, but that didn’t ease the congressional gridlock.
The projections also put the number of babies in Florida that will be born from mothers who are infected by the virus during the first trimester – the period at which research suggests they’re most vulnerable to Zika-related birth defects – at eight.
The Democratic presidential candidate cited congressional inaction on Zika, the mosquito-borne virus that has spread in South Florida during lawmakers’ seven-week summer recess. Legislators left Washington in mid-July after having failed to pass President Barack Obama’s emergency-funding request to fight Zika – and they won’t return until after Labor Day.
GOP rival Donald Trump appeared to agree with Clinton that lawmakers should fund efforts to combat Zika.
“It’s a tough thing to stop anyway”, he told the paper.
Advertisement
“I don’t think large-scale epidemics are possible in the US because of window screening and air conditioning”, said UF professor Ira Longini.
