No. 3 Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of NY said the GOP was using the bill “to assuage the hard right”.
Advertisement
Although continuing resolutions by definition maintain current funding levels, lawmakers could add emergency funds for natural disasters like the floods in Louisiana or wildfires in the West, as well as for Zika.
“Put people before politics and finally vote in favor for a clean funding bill to fight Zika right here in Florida”, she said while campaigning in the Sunshine State. But President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats are dead set against the idea – they want a full-year spending agreement completed this year – and Ryan said he wants to keep negotiating on the full-year spending bills through the fall. “Let’s do what the Senate did three months ago when it passed – bipartisan by 69 votes – $ 1.1 billion in emergency funding, and send it down to the House and tell the House to stop playing these games”. The bill includes some provisions that Democrats labeled “poison pill riders”, that, among other things, effectively block funding from going to Planned Parenthood affiliates.
“My interest is getting the funding, so if that’s the fastest way to get the funding, I support it”, Rubio said, while adding that he believes Democrats are exaggerating the impact of the provision.
It could change the political calculation for members who rejected the Zika bill as flawed but want to keep the government open, Blunt said.
-Defense policy: Members of a House-Senate conference who are working to write a final defense policy bill for the coming fiscal year are grappling with a range of issues, including the total amount to spend on the military and whether women should be required to register for a potential military draft. “They passed a Zika bill they knew wouldn’t pass”.
“It’s hard to explain why – despite their own calls for funding – Senate Democrats made a decision to block a bill that could help keep pregnant women and babies safer from Zika”, said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). But a year-end negotiation would also give GOP leaders one last shot at influencing federal spending in the event Republicans lose control of one or both chambers of Congress in 2017. That package isn’t offset, which a senior House appropriator said is important to the caucus. Marco Rubio (R-Florida). And time could be running out.
As senators traded barbs about whose fault it was, Florida health officials said they’d found seven more home-grown cases of Zika, six of them part of an outbreak in Miami Beach. “But instead, anti-women’s health politicians in the House are continuing their reckless crusade against Planned Parenthood’s patients”.
Advertisement
Democrats objected to language that would block Zika prevention and treatment money from going to Planned Parenthood clinics in Puerto Rico. The result was a $1.1 billion Zika package that included restrictions on Planned Parenthood and cuts to other federal health programs to offset the cost of the bill. Tuesday’s vote might prod Republicans to attach Zika money to temporary spending legislation.
