Congressional Democrats this week finally accepted a Republican plan to use $750 million in spending offsets to fund the nation’s Zika fight, after months of objections and at the end of what Democrats warned as a summer that demanded an immediate response to the virus.
That agreement emerged Thursday as part of a bill to fund the government through Dec. 9.
But in those negotiations, Democrats are still refusing to drop their demand that health clinics in Puerto Rico associated with Planned Parenthood must be able to access the Zika funds. Conservative lawmakers continue to push for language preventing the funds from reaching these clinics because of their association with Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Lawmakers are considering other tradeoffs in spending package talks, including a postponement of the Internet domain control handoff and the appointment of a critical board member to the Export-Import Bank.
Senate Republicans and Democrats Thursday exchanged offers for a deal that would provide both stopgap funding for the federal government as well as $1.1 billion for Zika, a mosquito-transmitted virus that causes birth defects. Senate Republicans had hoped to bring a bill to the floor this week, but the negotiations have stalled over the Planned Parenthood language.
Still, there are signs lawmakers believe a deal is close. The Senate on Monday will hold a vote to end debate on a bill that would serve as a legislative vehicle for the deal.
“Hopefully that will give us some momentum,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner.
Cornyn acknowledged that the Planned Parenthood fight is still the major dispute that has to be settled. Republicans are looking for a way to make sure Democrats don’t carve out what they say would essentially be an earmark for the women’s health provider.
“I know the goal is to try to basically make it neutral,” Cornyn said, so that the legislation neither eliminates nor specifically designates money for Planned Parenthood.
On the Zika offset, the emerging compromise would use $543 million that had been set aside for setting up Obamacare health insurance exchanges in U.S. territories, most of which are now exempt from most of the law. Democrats fought for months to ensure the Zika response would be funded through deficit spending, but on Thursday, they seemed to acknowledge that offsets were the only way forward.
“There probably will be” offsets, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., acknowledged Thursday.
Lawmakers are in talks about to include other tradeoffs, including one that would prevent President Obama from handing over U.S. control of Internet to a multi-stakeholder, nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. The handoff is set to take place on Oct. 1.
Democrats are willing to consider the ICANN measure, which is being pushed by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, but only if Republicans yield on appointing a long-awaited appointment of a third member to the board of the Export-Import Bank, which has been paralyzed for months due to the lack of a quorum.
The Ex-Im appointment is also at the top of President Obama’s wish list, and the White House is a key player in the ongoing talks on Capitol Hill.
“I hope some version of the ICANN language can make it in there,” Cornyn told the Examiner. “That’s one of the things being negotiated.”
Lawmakers are also in talks to settle a dispute over whether to include a provision in the bill that would allow mosquito spraying near water, which is prohibited under the Clean Water Act. Republicans want to temporarily lift the ban, Democrats don’t.
Both parties said they are hopeful a deal is imminent and will be spurred by the desire to go home and campaign and to act on Zika, which is spreading in the Southeastern region of the United States.
“As a doctor, I think we need to get this done quickly,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told the Examiner.
One congressional aide explained to the Examiner, “Mosquitos bite Republican and Democrat constituents.”
