The Zika Virus: Congress Plays Politics Again.

 

Whilst a substantial element of the current American polity believes it has no responsibility for the healthcare of its citizens, ideology on environmental health or public health emergencies accepts this is an issue for the federal government. The Zika virus, which has already struck more than fifteen hundred Americans, is especially dangerous to pregnant women who are at risk of delivering their babies with microephaly, a congenital condition associated with incomplete brain development. Hence attacking the Zika virus is something for Washington to handle.

Last February, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention advised the Obama administration that some $2 billion emergency funding was required to cope with Zika. This virus is carried by mosquitos, so the government needed to be ahead of the curve before the summer breeding season. As much time as possible was needed to produce a preventative vaccine. The Obama administration’s request to Congress for funds was met with a stern refusal. “The administration already has enough money,” it was told. As a result, The Health Department was forced to transfer almost $600 million from the successful, ongoing Ebola virus programme to get work started on Zika.

The $600 million funds were insufficient, so the President had a bill championed to Congress, seeking full funding, as estimated by health officials, to combat Zika. Rather than simply debating the request on its merits, the Senate Republicans attached the Zika bill to another spending bill, a general bill comprising military construction, Veterans Affairs, housing and urban development, and transportation programs. Buried in this huge spending measure, crafted by lobbyists and special interests, were provisions to weaken truck driver fatigue rules. How does such a measure help the voter?

The Senate had the opportunity to consider a clean Zika bill but Republican members would agree to a debate on its merits and separate from the general spending bill if, and only if, Senate Democrats agreed to cuts in the Obamacare programme. The Democrats refused, so the clean Zika bill failed.

The House considered a stand-alone Zika bill, with only a budget of $622 million, or about a third of funds needed. Here, the House Republicans saw an opportunity to play politics. They decided to rename a deregulatory pesticide bill as a Zika bill. Backed by agriculture and pesticide industries which spend more than $30 million a year to influence Congress, the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act, which would exempt pesticides from the Clean Water Act, had failed to pass the Senate for five years. Rebranded the Zika Vector Control Act, it now passed the House. At the moment, there is no companion pesticide bill before the Senate, which means the House bill would fail unless the House found a way to persuade the Senate to take it up.

On Wednesday night, Republican leaders found a way. They went to the House Rules Committee, which sets the rules for debates and votes, and put together their short-funded Zika bill and the pesticide exemption bill with the House’s military and veterans funding bill. They then attached all of that to the funding bill passed by the Senate. It passed, 233-180, on an almost 100% party-line vote.

I do not object to a legislature that seeks to be fiscally responsible. But to ignore advice from health officials about a virus which may prove to be a danger not only to hundreds of thousands of Americans, let alone potentially causing the postponement or cancellation of the Rio Olympics, cannot be right. Underfunding a programme to prevent the disease while playing politics for partisan causes is plain wrong.

The President is in a vice. I am sure he would like to veto the spending bill but doing so will block the Zika measure too. He has no line item veto rights. One must question the thinking process and the belief systems of those legislators voted to serve in the US Congress. Are they are not there to protect the health and welfare of all of the public or are they bound only to special interests?

There are times when I am so glad I live in a country whose political system is strong enough to expose this kind of hypocrisy and hold its legislators to ridicule. Here in the UK, environmental health issues like outbreaks of foot and mouth disease and BSE (Mad Cow disease) were both met with strong government action. There was no nonsense by our legislators. Had this not been the case, the country would have been in uproar. What a pity the American lawmakers are not bound by such strictures.