National Journal: More Zika Money is Coming, But Timing Remains Unclear

National Journal - Rachel Roubein 

Pub­lic-health of­fi­cials’ con­cern over the Zika vir­us is in­creas­ing, and some key Re­pub­lic­ans on Cap­it­ol Hill are warm­ing to the idea that fight­ing the dis­ease might mean dol­ing out more funds—even­tu­ally.

Earli­er this week, Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health and Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion of­fi­cials took over the White House brief­ing room, telling re­port­ers that the Zika vir­us—and its link to severe birth de­fects–is scar­i­er than re­search­ers ori­gin­ally thought. The ad­min­is­tra­tion har­bors com­plaints over the lack of ap­prov­al of its roughly $1.9 bil­lion emer­gency sup­ple­ment­al to com­bat Zika. The GOP re­sponse: That doesn’t mean more funds won’t come down the pike, just not im­me­di­ately.

“We’re hav­ing dis­cus­sions now on when,” Rep. Tom Cole, chair­man of the House Ap­pro­pri­ations Labor, Health, and Hu­man Ser­vices, Edu­ca­tion and Re­lated Agen­cies Sub­com­mit­tee, told re­port­ers Wed­nes­day morn­ing. “We’re cer­tainly fine, prob­ably through the end of the fisc­al year, so it’s not like we have to do something today, but we do need to do something in the fore­see­able fu­ture.”

More money could come dur­ing the an­nu­al ap­pro­pri­ations pro­cess—or the ap­prov­al of an emer­gency sup­ple­ment­al if the GOP deems the money a must-have be­fore Oct. 1, ac­cord­ing to House Ap­pro­pri­ations Com­mit­tee Chair­man Har­old Ro­gers.

“If ne­ces­sary, we’re pre­pared to try to do a sup­ple­ment­al bill if it’s needed, but we can’t de­cide wheth­er it’s needed or not be­cause we can’t get the in­form­a­tion from the agen­cies of the gov­ern­ment as to what they need it for,” the Ken­tucky Re­pub­lic­an said. “That would be for this cur­rent fisc­al year 16. For 17, we can handle that in the reg­u­lar pro­cess, in the draft­ing of the bills for fisc­al 17 that we’re go­ing to ap­pro­pri­ate.”

The House un­veiled its Ag­ri­cul­ture ap­pro­pri­ations bill earli­er this week with $10 mil­lion tucked in­side for the Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion to fund Zika and Ebola re­sponse activ­it­ies and ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment of medi­cines. When re­port­ers ques­tioned House Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Kev­in Mc­Carthy on Zika after a closed-door GOP con­fer­ence meet­ing Wed­nes­day, he said the House is con­tinu­ing to look at what’s needed to help curb the vir­us. He poin­ted to a bill headed to the pres­id­ent’s desk that in­centiv­izes com­pan­ies to de­vel­op treat­ments for the Zika vir­us.

On the oth­er side of the Cap­it­ol, Sen. Thad Co­chran said in a state­ment to Na­tion­al Journ­al that his Ap­pro­pri­ations Com­mit­tee would work with the ad­min­is­tra­tion and out­side ex­perts “to de­term­ine a timely and fisc­ally re­spons­ible re­sponse to glob­al pub­lic-health threats.” A path for­ward on more funds, such as through the ap­pro­pri­ations pro­cess or a stand-alone bill, hasn’t been de­term­ined, a GOP Ap­pro­pri­ations aide wrote in an email.

In 2014, the re­sponse to the Ebola emer­gency re­quest played out much quick­er. That Novem­ber, Pres­id­ent Obama asked Con­gress to ap­prove a nearly $6.2 bil­lion emer­gency sup­ple­ment­al to fund the Ebola re­sponse, and that next month, law­makers passed an fisc­al 2015 om­ni­bus bill that ap­pro­pri­ated $5.4 bil­lion in emer­gency funds to the pub­lic-health crisis.

Yet, the two are dif­fer­ent dis­eases, and “there was a lot more fear around Ebola than there was around Zika,” said Jen Kates, Kais­er Fam­ily Found­a­tion’s dir­ect­or of glob­al health and HIV policy. Re­search­ers are in the throes of learn­ing more about Zika, and on Wed­nes­day, CDC con­cluded for the first time that the vir­us causes mi­cro­cephaly—a con­di­tion where a baby is born with an ab­nor­mally small head and a po­ten­tially un­der­developed brain—and oth­er severe birth de­fects.

“Zika hasn’t hit the U.S. yet in a big way—it’s only been through people trav­el­ing,” Kates said. “Un­til yes­ter­day, there wasn’t a con­firmed link between Zika and mi­cro­cephaly, and now there is, and I think that’s go­ing to bring in­creased at­ten­tion to this as a crisis.”

It’s been al­most two months since Obama form­ally re­ques­ted Zika money from Con­gress, and ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials are pub­licly com­plain­ing about the lack of new funds. Last week, the ad­min­is­tra­tion be­grudgingly an­nounced it would di­vert un­spent Ebola money to com­bat Zika, a re­pur­pos­ing of funds Re­pub­lic­ans ar­gued should be done be­fore ap­pro­pri­at­ing more money. On Monday, Dr. Anne Schuchat, of the CDC, said a com­mit­ment of new re­sources is needed, as it adds a sense of mon­et­ary se­cur­ity when beef­ing up Zika-re­lated ef­forts.

“So what I would say is that people are act­ing in­tens­ively right now, but that we can’t—if ad­di­tion­al re­sources aren’t com­ing, we won’t be able to com­mit to the long-term work that’s needed,” Schuchat, the CDC’s prin­cip­al deputy dir­ect­or, said in the White House brief­ing room. “Then the oth­er thing is the places that the re­sources were taken from were areas where im­port­ant work was go­ing on. And I think we’re quite vul­ner­able if we’re not able to meet the com­mit­ments on the glob­al health se­cur­ity or the Ebola re­sponse and re­cov­ery.”

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