As the Zika virus spreads to more countries, Congress and the Obama administration are fighting over where to get the money to fight the outbreak.
President Obama asked Congress for $1.8 billion in emergency funding to combat the Zika virus, a mosquito-borne virus potentially linked to birth defects and a neurological disorder. But Congress has been reticent to dole out new funds.
GOP House appropriators have rejected the funding request, saying Obama first needs to spend money left over to fight the Ebola outbreak. In late 2014, Congress approved about $5.3 billion in emergency funds doled out to several agencies, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Defense and State.
HHS got $2.7 billion for Ebola response and preparedness. GOP appropriators told the administration in a letter last month that $1.4 billion remains unspent based on an HHS report late last year.
But while there is some funding left, “almost all has been committed,” agency spokeswoman Kathy Harben told the Washington Examiner.
Specifically, a part of it has been committed as global health security funds to be spent over five years to help improve the infrastructure of countries ravaged by the Ebola outbreak that killed more than 10,000 people primarily in West Africa.
Other funding has been committed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and research and development funding for vaccines, therapies and diagnostics.
Congress gave HHS nearly $600 million in global health security funding, and $525 million hadn’t been spent as of Dec. 31.
But that funding is already obligated to 17 countries that include the three West African countries — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — that were hit hardest by Ebola.
That $525 million will be distributed until 2019 and will be used to build up the health systems of the countries.
“Building these systems and even more importantly using these systems to respond takes some time, but we know that these investments pay off,” Harben said.
The remainder is allocated for boosting Ebola preparedness in eight neighboring countries. Almost all of that funding is committed and will be spent over the next five years, HHS said.
“We are still seeing small clusters of Ebola in the three affected countries,” Harben said.
By the end of fiscal 2016, CDC will have spent more than 95 percent of its domestic funding, she added.
Harben said HHS doesn’t believe the funds should be shifted to Zika.
“The need to respond to the Zika virus urgently does not diminish our need to continue to implement [global health security], which is a long-term effort to keep Americans safe from emerging threats, here and abroad,” she said.
The Ebola supplemental didn’t just hand out money to HHS. It also gave the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development $2.5 billion, with $1.3 billion unobligated based on recent data.
The lawmakers said that more than $400 million of that hasn’t been programmed and will expire by the end of the fiscal year that ends in September.
Neither the State Department nor USAID had returned a request for comment as of press time.
The GOP leaders said that before it can consider any funding request, the administration and Congress need “to pursue the use of unobligated funds, including unobligated Ebola funds, which are substantial, to meet the immediate needs of responding to the Zika outbreak.”
Harben said that HHS staff is working on the response to the Zika virus through existing funds for emergency preparedness and general infectious diseases.
“Without new funding from Congress, CDC can only continue to provide minimal technical assistance to Puerto Rico and other parts of the world affected by Zika,” she said.
