President Obama on Friday urged voters across the country to press their members of Congress to support his $1.9 billion request to help the U.S. government and healthcare providers prepare for a Zika virus outbreak this summer.
“This is something that is solvable,” he said. “It is not something that we have to panic about, but it is something that we need to take seriously … we’ve got to get moving.”
“The bottom line is, Congress needs to get me a bill,” he added, arguing that Congress shouldn’t take the week off after Memorial Day as planned before it delivers a Zika bill providing the full funding he requested. “To the extent that we’re not handling this thing on the front end, we’re going to have bigger problems on the back end.”
The White House wants $1.9 billion in new funding to help heath providers prepare for and fight the virus. Both chambers of Congress passed Zika funding bills this week, although their spending levels were far apart.
The House approved a bill to reprogram $622 million in existing funds to fight Zika, while the Senate passed a bipartisan compromise of $1.1 billion in new funding.
Obama is rejecting the congressional action so far, and still wants the full $1.9 billion. He outlined several steps the administration is taking to combat the spread of the virus and develop a vaccine and implement diagnostic tests.
“All of this work costs money,” he said. The $1.9 billion figure was not “from the top of our heads, this was based on public health assessments of all the work that needs to be done.”
He specifically criticized the House version, and said that version is saying “You can rob Peter to pay Paul.”
The president delivered the remarks after meeting with his healthcare team, including Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan; Amy Pope, deputy homeland security adviser; Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden; and Tony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
