“It’s hard to explain why, despite their own calls for funding, Senate Democrats made a decision to block a bill that would keep pregnant women and babies safer from Zika”, he said on the Senate floor before reintroducing the previously blocked measure. However, Democrats blocked consideration of the bill in the Senate because of attached legislation that prohibited Zika funding from going to Planned Parenthood and weakened some environmental regulations.
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But the potential consequences of further stalling funding over political axe-grinding-at the same time that the CDC has said it is “out of money” and mosquito-born and sexually-transmitted cases of Zika continue to spread across the country-are so destructive that even some reliably anti-Planned Parenthood Republicans support excising the language.
Not really! Planned Parenthood is a sacred cow few Democrats dare touch.
The money would be used to develop vaccines, track the virus and control the mosquito population.
Each failed to get the 60 votes needed to advance. “If they get bitten by a mosquito where they are in another state, now that mosquito is infected”, he said of the 2,722 infected Americans. Thousands more, including 160 Texans, have acquired the virus from traveling overseas.
In February, President Barack Obama asked for $1.9 billion in emergency funding to fight Zika.
Senate Democrats blocked similar funding measures in June and July before Congress left for the summer recess.
Just last week, Sen.
Congressional leaders said they expect to approve funding for the Zika virus by the end of the month, although it’s unclear how they plan to do so.
“I’m confident that, by the time we deal with all the year-end fiscal matters in the continuing resolution, we will find a solution”. The House is scheduled to be in session only 17 days before the end of the fiscal year – and the expiration of current government funding – on September 30. Congress must pass that bill by October 1 to keep the government operating. And it will again likely be only a temporary spending measure, likely lasting only until December.
Reid said until the Judiciary Committee schedules confirmation hearings for the judge, Democrats would use the chamber’s rules to hold up action in Senate committees. The vote came as Congress returned from a seven-week vacation.
-Hillary Clinton: Furious the FBI didn’t recommend charges against their political rival over her private email server, Republicans now are demanding that the Justice Department open a new investigation into whether the Democratic presidential nominee lied during testimony previous year before a House panel investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. A subsequent vote would prevent the Senate from turning to a $576 billion Pentagon spending measure.
Hoyer said Republicans intentionally added “poison pill” measures that would force Democrats to reject the bill so that they could spend the summer blaming them for blocking the legislation. The House passed the bill, but it’s since stalled in the Senate.
Lawmakers will likely need to go back to the drawing board if they’d like to send major new dough to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is doing a lot of the frontline work on Zika, and the National Institutes of Health, which is helping developing a vaccine.
About $510 million of those funds were pulled from resources previously allocated to combat Ebola.
The debate over government funding is less about money than timing.
Public health officials are now warning that the funds are running low.
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The political gridlock comes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it had spent almost all of the $22m (£16m) allocated to the agency in the fight against Zika.
