The White House charged Wednesday that Republicans are ignoring the threats posed by the Zika virus by refusing to provide more funding to fight it, and said the U.S. needs to quickly authorize $1.9 billion in new funds after the first documented U.S. case of a baby born with a Zika-related brain condition.
Presidential press secretary Josh Earnest said it’s “unclear at this point” whether the extra funding would have made a difference in the baby’s health, but said Republicans should still take heed.
“To the extent that it may remind people that we have a looming threat out there, then hopefully it would prompt Republicans to reconsider their approach thus far, which is to basically deny that there is a problem,” Earnest told reporters traveling with the president to Indiana on Air Force One.
A baby girl delivered in New Jersey on Tuesday is the first in the continental U.S. to be born with microcephaly, a Zika-related condition marked by a smaller skull and partially formed brain.
The 31-year-old mother apparently contracted the Zika virus while in Honduras and was admitted to the emergency room at Hackensack University Medical Center on Friday while reportedly vacationing in the United States.
Obama has requested $1.9 billion in funding to help public health professionals across the country prepare for and fight the virus. A contingent of House Republicans have argued that the White House must first use leftover money Congress provided to fight the Ebola virus, which the U.S. was largely successful in stamping out before it became a national crisis.
Republicans say the government still has access to plenty of money to fight the virus, even though new funding has not been authorized. Since 2014, Ebola cases have dropped significantly and the World Health Organization has declared the outbreak over.
But Earnest cited public health professionals in the Obama administration, as well as several Republican governors, who have argued that more money is needed to fight Zika.
“Republicans have suggested that somehow the government already has the resources that are necessary to deal with this, but that’s not what our public health professionals say,” he said.
He also pointed to a letter from Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, sent Wednesday to the Louisiana congressional delegation, urging them to support funding to fight Zika, as well as calls from Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, who has called on the Obama administration to expedite all available resources to start preparing for the Zika virus as soon as possible.
“It is clear that Republicans outside of Washington, D.C., recognize that there is more that should be done to support local efforts to fight the Zika virus and we hope that Republicans in Congress will finally get the message,” he said.
Congress left for a week-long recess on Thursday without reconciling differences between the House and Senate’s funding packages for Zika. The House wants to give $622 million taken from other programs and the Senate has proposed $1.1 billion in new funding.
Robert King contributed to this report.
