The end of any administration usually leads to contentious fights in Congress over spending priorities, and 2016 is no different. When it comes to preparing for the potential effects of the Zika virus, Democrats in Congress and the President have stymied efforts to protect a favored constituency.
They’re insisting that abortion provider Planned Parenthood be eligible for additional, emergency appropriations for Zika preparations.
How did we get here?
With the summer Olympics and the July 4 and August congressional recesses approaching, time is running out for Congress to appropriate funds to deal with the potential threat posed by Zika. President Obama proposed Congress fund preparations at a level of $1.9 billion, which immediately drew pushback from Republicans in Congress. That figure was too much to handle in light of budget constraints, both procedural and political. New spending amounts generally must be offset by spending cuts elsewhere—a problem for Democrats, since Republicans control Congress—or by new taxes or tax increases, which Republicans usually oppose.
In a compromise, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate sent through a $1.1 billion measure in May for Zika funding through the end of fiscal year 2017. The measure, which did not “pay for” the Zika funding and designated it emergency spending exempt from discretionary spending caps, won 44 Democratic votes, passing 89-8. (The eight nay votes were all Republicans.)
The House committed $622 million through the end of this fiscal year, and did offset that figure with spending cuts and transfers. Naturally, since the House wanted to deny Zika funds to abortion provider Planned Parenthood, the president jumped into the fray to let legislators know his main Zika priority: Planned Parenthood. Any bill that denied funding eligibility to Planned Parenthood would be vetoed, he warned.
The GOP-led House and Senate formed a conference committee to hash out the differences between the two “Milcon/VA” bills (thus named because it funds military construction and veterans’ programs). In a series of statements, Senate Democrats like Barbara Mikulski of Maryland said they were “committed to sending a Zika supplemental to the President as soon as possible.” Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois and ranking member of the Budget Committee Patty Murray made similar pledges, stressing the importance of acting ASAP.
Then, Tuesday, Senate Democrats banded together to torpedo the Zika funding bill.
It’s been standard practice for decades, and likely will for decades to come, that a party out of power in both chambers doesn’t get much of a say in conference committees. Regardless of party, the minority party feigns outrage every single time, complaining they got railroaded. Still, any compromise from a conference committee has to get 60 votes in the Senate and 218 in the House.
Since the House fully offset its $622 million, and the Senate offset $0 of its $1.1 billion, the conference committee elected to find $750 million in offsets to help pay for most of the proposed Zika funding.
$543 million in offsets is proposed to come out of Obamacare, specifically money intended to help U.S. territories set up the largely failed health exchanges and to subsidize cost-sharing for residents of U.S. territories. Another $107 million in offsets came from unobligated monies set aside to combat the Ebola virus. The last $100 million comes from the “nonrecurring expenses fund,” a slush fund at the Department of Health and Human Services that has largely been used to fund the failed Obamacare exchanges.
Senate Democrats, in a letter to House speaker Paul Ryan and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, decried paying for any of the funding, arguing that “Americans facing an immediate crisis…deserve immediate action not bound by the broken budgeting process.” The White House has already identified $589 million in unused Ebola resources it intends to use to combat Zika, on top of the stalled proposal.
And then, there’s the Planned Parenthood language.
The Associated Press reported “the GOP move appeared to incite Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to charge, without foundation, that the bill ‘cuts off women’s access to birth control.'” Republicans say it does no such thing, as the conference legislation would allow reimbursement through public healthcare plans like Medicaid for birth control, though not abortion. The Republican language would not cut a red cent from Planned Parenthood, which already gets funding through Medicaid and other federal birth control programs — it just would deny Planned Parenthood access to these appropriated funds. Perhaps anticipating objections from Democrats, Republicans in Congerss countered by expanding access to birth control funding for community health centers, public health departments, and hospitals.
Another rankle is over the issue of the application of pesticides, a longstanding right-left fight since the banning of DDT. Democrats claim the conference language “endangers clean water protections” as stipulated by the Clean Water Act. The conference legislation does relax what Republicans consider “an expensive and time-consuming duplicative paperwork burden” regarding EPA permitting requirements for applications of Zika-specific pesticides, but the provision does not permanently change underlying law, and sunsets in 180 days.
The last point of contention for Democrats in the bill is a removal of a Democrat-sought rider already in law which bans the Confederate flag from flying over veterans’ cemeteries.
With the House already in recess until July 4, Senate Republicans argue this was the last chance to tackle Zika funding before the coming Republican and Democratic National Conventions, and the August recess. The Washington Post reports that there are nine legislative days after July 4 before the seven weeks of conventions and recess in which legislators have time to hammer out their differences.
