Maybe Democrats aren’t so confident anymore about retaking the Senate in a romp. This would explain why they’d rather reserve the Zika crisis as political ammunition for the campaign than pass the bipartisan $1.1 billion bill to wipe out the mosquito-borne virus that can cause birth defects. On Tuesday Senate Democrats for the third time this year filibustered the Zika rescue legislation, which failed 52-46. They have claimed for months that more money is urgently needed for prevention, research and health services. Mosquitos are now carrying Zika in the continental U.S. and some 16,800 and rising Americans are infected, mostly in Puerto Rico with more than 700 in Florida. A Zika funding bill passed the Senate 89-8 in May, with the support of every Democrat, but then Harry Reid ambushed the House-Senate compromise conference report, which has passed the House and can’t be amended. The decoy that Democrats settled on for this double cross is that the bill “bans” Zika money from flowing to Planned Parenthood and its ProFamilias affiliate in Puerto Rico. This is a transparent falsehood that even the dumbest Democrats aren’t dumb enough to believe. The legislative text appropriates block grants “for health services provided by public health departments, hospitals, or reimbursed through public health plans.” The notional basis for the Democratic opposition is that it does not specifically single out Planned Parenthood and ProFamilias as grant recipients. That’s it. Congress isn’t banning anything.
The Journal is right. As we’ve reported before, most of the money in the anti-Zika bill goes toward things like mosquito prevention and vaccine development, but a tiny slice is reserved for extra public health funding. Among other public health programs that would be eligible for supplemental funding in the bill is Medicaid. There is no law preventing Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funding.
Yet Harry Reid claims that women will “have no place” to get birth control if the anti-Zika bill passes (ignoring the fact that the bill would not cut one cent from hundreds of millions of tax dollars already spent on birth control or the hundreds of millions of tax dollars Planned Parenthood already receives through Medicaid and Title X). Other Senate Democrats make similarly dishonest claims.
So why are Democrats filibustering the bill? Politics seems like the simplest explanation. Hopefully the mainstream media, which is on a kick right now (correctly) calling out Donald Trump for lying about his position on the Iraq war, will find time to question Virginia senator and Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine, as well as his colleagues, about the blatant untruths they’ve been spreading.
