Some Republicans are regretting giving the Obama administration so much money for fighting Ebola two years ago, fueling a desire by some lawmakers to not grant new funding to fight the Zika virus.
Congress left for a week-long recess on Thursday without reconciling differences between the House and Senate’s funding packages for Zika. The House wants to give $622 million taken from other programs and the Senate $1.1 billion in new funding.
Some lawmakers said part of the reticence to support new funding is how the $5.3 billion was spent in 2014 to combat Ebola. The appropriation came in the wake of a few cases in the U.S. and thousands of deaths in West Africa.
Since 2014, Ebola cases have dropped significantly and the World Health Organization has declared the outbreak over.
Some Republicans now regret giving so much for Ebola.
“We allocated more money to that than needed and that’s why some of that money was brought over as an emergency into solving the Zika problem,” said Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., on the Senate floor earlier this week.
Rep. Mike Meadows, R-N.C., told the Washington Post that he thought the Ebola response was a “success” but that most of the $2.7 billion given to the Department of Health and Human Services was not spent in a prudent and “logical” manner.
Other Republicans have pushed back that the Obama administration can’t take funding from the remaining Ebola pot. They have pointed to instances in which they say the administration has redirected funding.
“The administration in its own budget took $40 million out of the Ebola fund and directed it into a worthy cause: malaria suppression,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said recently on the House floor.
“If we already have the resources to confront the crisis, which we do, we should do so within our existing capabilities as opposed to adding to the deficit,” he added.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., recently wrote in an op-ed in the Daily Signal that Obama sent $500 million to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund after Congress refused to allocate funding to it.
That money, he argues, came from an $80 billion international aid fund and that the money could have been used to help countries fight Zika.
Immediately after President Obama made the $1.9 billion funding request, Republican lawmakers said that there was more than $1 billion in leftover Ebola funds.
Administration officials have responded that a majority of the Ebola funding is already committed. The White House did not return a request for comment.
With Republicans not taking action on the funding request, the administration decided in April to reallocate about $500 million from Ebola to fight Zika. The administration had previously told Congress that a majority of the Ebola funds are largely spent.
Congress gave a total of $5.3 billion in emergency funds; and $3.7 billion went to international aid and development, another $515 million to research and development and $1.1 billion to a domestic response.
The Department of Health and Human Services received $2.7 billion for Ebola response and preparedness.
But administration officials told Congress that funds were committed to about 17 African and Asian countries to boost their healthcare systems to fight future outbreaks.
House and Senate Democrats have vociferously opposed taking any money from the existing Ebola funds.
