Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says Republicans are “doing nothing” in their closed-door negotiations over how much money to allocate for fighting the Zika virus.
“It is stunning and sad that instead of funding our nation’s response to this emergency in a bipartisan way, Republicans have retreated behind closed doors and negotiate Zika funding among themselves,” Reid said from the Senate floor Wednesday morning. “There is a conference going on, but nothing’s happening.”
Members and staff from the House and Senate appropriations committees have been meeting in a conference committee to reconcile two separate bills, the House version giving $622 million to fight Zika and the Senate version allocating $1.1 billion.
But neither bill supplies the funding hoped for by Democrats, who support President Obama’s request for $1.9 billion. Republicans say a lower funding level is sufficient, as they want to divert unused funds originally allocated to fight Ebola and they want to make sure any Zika spending bill is paid for.
Reid dug in to the Democrat position on Wednesday, sharply criticizing Republicans for refusing the $1.9 billion request and predicting they won’t present a final agreement until after they have left Washington for the Independence Day recess next week.
“It’s going to come here after Republicans in the House have decided to go home,” Reid said. “House Democrats have to go with them, and they will be gone, and so we’ll get jammed sometime next week. The Republican leader will say ‘listen, we have got to do this. The House is gone. We can’t change anything.'”
Reid noted that nearly 2,200 Americans have been infected with the Zika virus, including 423 pregnant women whose fetuses could face serious birth defects including a condition called microcephaly.
