Republicans and Democrats are quietly making progress on the details of a supplemental spending bill that would provide more than $1 billion to fight the Zika virus, despite a week of public feuding over whether and how to fund the effort.
The deal would get the Obama administration about half of the $1.9 billion it requested from Congress to fight the virus, which has been linked to birth defects in newborns.
According to Republican leadership aides, Senate lawmakers are “closing in” on an agreement for additional money.
The accord comes despite Republican resistance to supplemental spending deals, and their view that the Obama administration has not provided enough details about how they want to spend the money and why it is necessary.
Congress recently directed the federal government to take on the mosquito-transmitted Zika by immediately utilizing $590 million left over from the Ebola threat.
House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday said House lawmakers are still waiting for the information, but he signaled he remains open to a supplemental deal.
“We need to find a vaccine,” Ryan said Thursday. “And so we are going to have the kind of conversations about what form that goes through the appropriations process.”
The lead Senate negotiators are Sens. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Patty Murray, D-Wash, who are the chair and ranking member, respectively, of the subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. The other sponsors are Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
The Senate will consider the bill as part of the fiscal 2017 appropriations process, but the money would be available much sooner.
“There’s never been a debate about whether to do this, but we need to do it in the right way,” Blunt said Thursday.
In a hearing on an unrelated spending bill, Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., said Thursday the Zika spending legislation “will provide new resources to supplement other funding that has been reprogrammed from other purposes.”
“It is my expectation that this proposal will be offered to an appropriations measure on the Senate floor in the near future,” he added.
