House, Senate Zika negotiations finally start next week

Lawmakers have to hammer out the differences between a House-passed measure to divert $622 million of existing funding to fight the virus, and a Senate bill calling for $1.1 billion in new spending.

“The Senate was busy getting their product across the floor and appointing their conference and we were doing the same thing,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., an appropriator and key negotiator. “Now, you just have to sit down and figure out where there is overlap and where there are points of agreement.”

The biggest hurdle to an agreement is whether to allow the emergency bill to add to the deficit, or to find a way to pay for the measure.

The Senate bill simply adds to the deficit, while the House bill spends no new money and instead redirects $622 million from elsewhere federal budget, mostly raiding a fund set aside for the now-receded Ebola virus.

“We are not very far apart,” Cole said. “This is really a debate about how do you finance what you know you need to do, more than anything else.”

Cole suggested negotiators could get closer by removing extraneous funding for items in the Senate bill that are not directly related to the Zika fight, such as money directed to buildings used by the National Institutes of Health.

“There are some things that may or may not have merit that should not be in the Zika package,” Cole said.

Republican sources on the House Appropriations sources told the Washington Examiner the final number will almost certainly be lower than the Senate’s $1.1 billion. But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., warned Democrats may not agree to vote for anything less than the $1.1 billion Senate measure, which passed with bipartisan support and was already frowned on by Democrats who wanted to fund Obama’s full request.

“This is not a compromise,” Pelosi said Thursday, when asked whether she would support a funding bill that falls between the House and Senate measures. “The first thing was a compromise and now we’re going backward. So it’s really unfortunate and we need the $1.9 billion now. Let’s see where they where they come down.”

Lawmakers in the House and Senate, including Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the Examiner they hope to complete a bill by next week. It’s an ambitious goal, considering both sides have just started negotiating.

Cole said the goal is to finish before Congress adjourns for the July 4 recess. “Sooner is better if we can come to an agreement,” he said.

The emergency funds need only last until Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. Cole said Congress would provide “hundreds of millions” of dollars in new funding to fight Zika in the fiscal 2017 budget.

The federal government is currently using $590 million in money from the Ebola fund to fight Zika. Cole said they are not out of funds, although the Obama administration has refused to say how much money it has spent so far on Zika.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said officials from the Centers for Disease Control have assured him they have enough funding for now.

“There are enough resources currently but we need to get our work done as rapidly as possible,” McCarthy said.

Democrats have been clobbering the GOP publicly for failing to pass Zika funding legislation in the Republican-led House and Senate.

They point to the growing threat posed by the spread of the virus and the onslaught of the summer mosquito season. Earlier this month, a Honduran woman gave birth to a baby in the United States afflicted with microcephaly, a birth defect caused by Zika. The mother caught the disease before coming to the United States, but transmission by mosquitos in the United States is imminent, the Centers for Disease Control has warned.

“By the time Republicans provide this money, the mosquitoes will have died or gone home,” Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday.

Democrats agreed to the Senate bill, but if fell short of the $1.9 billion request the Obama administration sent in February.