White House spokesman Josh Earnest mocked House Republicans for trying to undo a law banning confederate flags from federal cemeteries while approving emergency funding to combat the Zika virus.
“Republicans now apparently see Zika funding as the vehicle to allow the display of Confederate flags in cemeteries across the country,” Earnest said, referring to the House’s approval last week of $1.1 billion to fight Zika that would also reverse the law that prohibits the emblem of Dixie at federal burial plots.
“I don’t really understand what that has to do with the Zika virus … but that’s the vehicle that Republicans have apparently chosen to use to ram through a partisan measure,” Earnest said.
Earnest said that the Health and Human Services Department has had to take money away from other health priorities to fight Zika since the Obama administration first requested $1.9 billion to take on the mosquito-borne virus four months ago.
Earnest said it’s not a question of public health officials having insufficient funding now that the Senate is leaving town for the July 4 recess without allocating more money for the Zika virus.
“They need that money right now,” Earnest said when asked when they will run out of money. “They needed that money four months ago.”
