Even more annoying than the whine of a mosquito has been the U.S. House Republicans’ response to the Zika virus.
In February, President Barack Obama made an emergency request for $1.9 billion to fund vaccine research, mosquito control efforts and other work to timely address the growing threat from Zika.
Now prevalent in South and Central America and threatening to move into some southern U.S. states, the mosquito-borne virus is not typically fatal and in most cases results in only mild symptoms. But its threat is much greater for pregnant women and the children they carry. The virus can cause birth defects when pregnant women are infected by mosquitoes or through sexual contact with an infected person. The most common birth defect is microcephaly, which results in infants with abnormally small heads and reduced brain development. But researchers also are investigating Zika’s possible association with neurological disorders in adults, including Guillain-Barre syndrome.
An estimated 500 people in the continental U.S. have contracted the virus, almost all during travel abroad. But another 700 in Puerto Rico and other U.S. Territories have been infected by mosquitoes, including more than 100 pregnant women.
When neither the Senate nor the House moved quickly enough to provide funding, the White House instead diverted $510 million that had been allocated to research and fight the Ebola virus, with the hope that Congress would eventually approve the Zika request and allow the restoration of the Ebola funding.
This week, the Senate responded, first with a bipartisan proposal by Florida’s senators, including former Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, to fund the president’s full $1.9 billion request. When that failed to attract enough Republican votes, the Senate approved a compromise negotiated by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, and Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, that will allocate $1.1 billion.
Murray would have preferred legislation to fund the president’s full $1.9 billion request, a spokeswoman said, but as she has before, Washington’s senior senator worked across the aisle to find a solution that would win passage. In answer to charges that the president had requested a “slush fund,” Blunt said in a New York Times story that the package had been trimmed back to address the emergency and will finance research and response through September 2017.
Such responsible compromise is less certain in the House, where Republicans are expected to vote soon on a package that provides only $622 million, much of it again diverted from Ebola work.
That’s too little and threatens further delay and a loss of progress on Ebola. While the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is no longer out of control, the disease continues to flare, most recently in Guinea and Liberia.
But adding a maddening itch to that mosquito bite of a funding package is a bill that the House is expected to vote on next week. The Zika Vector Control Act sounds promising, as if the threat is being taken seriously. But House Republicans, as reported by The Hill, have only renamed and changed the effective date for legislation proposed last year that seeks to weaken federal Clean Water Act standards that have little to do with Zika.
Formerly titled the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act, the rechristened legislation would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from requiring permits to spray pesticides near bodies of water, if the pesticide is federally approved and the application has been approved by the state.
Prior federal approval of a particular pesticide doesn’t guarantee that its use near a body of water is safe or even effective. Lifting environmental protections — and risking a threat to public health from a lack of oversight on toxic chemicals — is not going to further the fight against Zika.
The White House has threatened to veto the House proposal on Zika funding but appears ready to accept the $1.1 billion Senate package. The House should adopt the Senate package quickly to advance work that is needed now on a potentially devastating health threat.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
