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Federal Money Trickles Toward Zika As Doctors Issue New Warnings

By Chris Deaton

Prominent GOP lawmakers are signaling an openness to funding efforts to combat the Zika virus, right as the Obama administration freed up existing money to address the issue. The exact path forward, however, remains undetermined.

Republican appropriators had told the White House to use leftover funds already allocated to fight the Ebola epidemic for this latest medical crisis. Obama requested $1.9 billion of emergency spending in February, but the House members responded that more than $2.7 billion marked for Ebola remained between the Departments of Health and Human Services and State. The administration ultimately announced last week that it would transfer $589 million of the money, most of it for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Congress has been hesitant to produce an emergency measure on top of that, with House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) saying that the White House needed to provide more specifics about how the requested funds would be used. However, he and other Appropriations Committee Republicans have acknowledged that more money is likely to come in some form — just not necessarily outside the normal federal funding process, which typically drags into the fall.

The Associated Press has more:

Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., told reporters that “we’re prepared to try to do a supplemental bill if it’s needed” and that action is likely “before the end of the fiscal year” on Oct. 1. At a hearing later, he acknowledged for the first time that the panel is working on a supplemental spending measure but that he wants more details to supplement the administration’s request, which he said is “almost a slush fund.” Another senior Republican said additional Zika money most likely wouldn’t come before September at the earliest. “We’re certainly fine probably through the end of the fiscal year, so it’s not like we have to do something today,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., chairman of the House panel responsible for the Centers on Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. “But we do need to do something in the foreseeable future, and I would think before the end of the fiscal year,” perhaps as an attachment to a must-pass stopgap funding bill that’s required to prevent a government shutdown in October.

Still fresh from the presidential campaign trail, Sen. Marco Rubio agreed that the White House needed to specify how it’d use the emergency money. But he actually broke ranks in backing such a measure.

“While I’m supportive of fully funding the president’s initiative on this, I want to make sure that the money, when appropriated, will be appropriately spent on what we’re trying to address,” he said last Friday. Rubio’s state of Florida leads the nation in Zika cases.

All the activity and shifting opinions come as the CDC has stepped up its warnings about the threats Zika poses to the public. One of the agency’s top officials said Monday that the virus “seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought.” And just Wednesday, the CDC announced that it had enough evidence to demonstrate that Zika could lead to birth defects in the children of infected mothers.

“Never before in history has there been a situation where a bite from a mosquito can result in a devastating malformation,” CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said.

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