[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 108 (Wednesday, July 6, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4778-S4779]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ZIKA VIRUS FUNDING

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I am sure the American public recognizes 
that we are returning from another vacation--a break, as they are 
called--without a serious proposal to address Zika.
  Zika is a threat. It is a scourge. In less than 10 days, the Senate 
will adjourn for its longest break in many decades. Sadly, though, 
Republicans are no closer to getting serious about Zika. The Senate 
will vote again on their cynical conference report, which I will 
describe in some detail in a minute. It is full of partisan provisions 
designed to inject politics into a public health emergency.
  This bad legislation will never pass and will never get a 
Presidential signature. We should be working for a bipartisan solution, 
but my friend the Republican leader said we are going to vote on this 
again. Vote on this again--that is too bad.
  It is not a surprise that the party of Donald Trump and Mitch 
McConnell refuses to responsibly address the threat posed by Zika. It 
is a virus like we have never seen before. Mosquitoes have caused 
problems for many, many generations but never, ever, birth defects.
  Democrats have spent more than 4 months sounding the alarm on Zika 
and have called on Republicans to join us to fund a responsible 
response to this threat. It was looming, and now it is here. But 
Republicans have refused to make Zika a priority.
  It hasn't always been this way. In the not-too-distant past, 
Republicans worked with us on crises and disasters. The last three 
public health emergencies--Ebola, H1N1 flu, avian flu--had much higher 
pricetags, yet responses to each passed Congress in a very short period 
of time.
  It has been 130 days since President Obama requested $1.9 billion for 
public health officials to protect the American people against Zika. 
This isn't some figure he came up with out of the air. He was told this 
by the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, 
and other public health officials.
  Republicans have simply ignored this emergency. It is an emergency. 
So why is the party of Trump and McConnell treating Zika differently 
than they treated every other modern public health emergency?
  Well, maybe it could be that it is uniquely devastating on women. I 
would hate to think this is the case, but you can't ignore the facts 
when women face the greatest risk--terrible risks. Everyone now knows 
these mosquitoes are ravaging thousands and thousands of people, and 
tens of thousands of women have this virus. We don't yet know how many 
will give birth to these deformed babies.
  Suddenly, Republican men suddenly feel they know best about women's 
health. This isn't new. They have always done that. You see on TV that 
the people who are the most pro-life are men, not women.
  Every day new reports emerge of Americans being affected with Zika. 
Right now we know at least of about 550 women who have this infection. 
It has been proven in labs. As I have indicated, millions more are 
threatened, and women in States with large Latina populations are at 
the greatest risk.
  Zika has been linked to many health problems but notably a terrible 
birth defect called microcephaly, which happens when an expectant 
mother contracts Zika. Already, seven babies in the United States have 
been born with birth defects caused by Zika. Most of them haven't 
survived.
  We have all seen the images of these babies with their small skulls, 
most of them caved in. It is heartbreaking, but we should do something 
to stop it.
  Still, the Republican leader is wasting time with failed votes on 
really unserious legislation. This sort of reckless partisanship--no 
matter the cost to women and families--is exactly the sort of behavior 
that led to the rise of Donald Trump, the sort of legislation you would 
expect from Trump and McConnell's new Republican Party.
  To get the votes of the loudest, most bizarre members of the tea 
party, Republicans are pushing one of the most irresponsible pieces of 
legislation we have ever seen in Congress, ever. Not surprisingly, 
Republicans returned to their obsession with defunding Planned 
Parenthood. This isn't new. This is the old playbook: Let's defund 
Planned Parenthood; let's go out and get some phony pictures of what 
they are doing--which have all been proven to be false. But let's do 
something to go after Planned Parenthood--led by, of course, men, with 
rare exception.

  The Republican bill would restrict funding for Planned Parenthood and 
other family planning clinics. These are the very places that provide 
birth control to women in Zika-affected areas. Planned Parenthood has 
provided many women a place to go to get

[[Page S4779]]

their health care. This is beyond hypocrisy. Republicans are expecting 
women to magically stop the spread of Zika and prevent their babies 
from developing birth defects, all while denying them access to family 
planning services.
  But Republicans don't stop there. Their bill would also hurt veterans 
by slashing the Senate's level of funding to the VA by $500 billion. 
What was that money to be used for? Processing claims of veterans. They 
wiped that out. It would roll back environmental protections, and the 
clincher, as we all know, is they would allow the Confederate flag to 
fly over cemeteries. These provisions are as unacceptable as they are 
partisan. That is why Senate Democrats rejected the outrageous 
Republican bill and will do so again.
  The Zika threat is growing, but that hasn't changed the Republicans' 
vacation plans. They need time to unify around Donald Trump in 
Cleveland but no time for American women. For today's Trump and 
McConnell Republicans, a public health crisis that is 
disproportionately dangerous to women isn't worth serious, bipartisan 
action. Add to that fact that Zika is affecting women by the tens of 
thousands in Central and South America and the picture becomes even 
clearer: The anti-immigrant party of Trump and McConnell would rather 
be on vacation than lift a finger to help.
  The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control 
are warning that vaccine research and other efforts to protect 
Americans from Zika is likely to stop without immediate action from 
Congress.
  A poll released last week by the Kaiser Foundation found 72 percent 
of Americans want the government to spend more to fight Zika--not less, 
more. We need to act, and we need to act now.
  It is obvious that picking a fight over women's health is more 
important to Republicans than a bipartisan response to stop the spread 
of this dreaded virus. Democrats have called on Republicans to work 
with us to get something done. A 7-week vacation should be delayed. 
There is no excuse for inaction and partisanship. We cannot afford to 
waste another day, a week, another month--we have already wasted 4 
months--for Republicans to help stop the spread of this emergency. Let 
us get to work and do it now.

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