[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6096-6097]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  TRANSPORTATION, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES 
                  APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2016--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 
up to 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, there is an urgent need that we must 
address--I hope it will be later in the day--which is emergency funding 
to facilitate a rapid response to a spreading public health crisis--now 
in Puerto Rico but threatening the rest of our Nation. There must be a 
rapid, robust response to the public health emergency the Zika virus 
poses.
  Zika is a vicious, virulent virus capable of crippling and killing. 
We have seen its effects in some cases of developmental disability that 
has resulted to children. It poses a threat to 4 million people in the 
Americas.
  Connecticut may not be generally thought to have a warm climate, but 
the mosquitoes are swarming and spawning there. They include a type of 
mosquito--the Asian tiger--that has now been documented to carry Zika. 
This poses an immediate and urgent threat for Connecticut and for the 
entire eastern coast and Northeast United States.
  There is a way that Connecticut is contributing to a solution. Two of 
our companies in Connecticut, Quest and Protein Sciences, are actively 
working on a vaccine. I visited Protein Sciences recently and saw 
firsthand the work that is being done there, but the scientists at that 
company and others working on a vaccine need this emergency funding. 
That is their plea to us, and I hope we will respond to it today--not 
just because the vaccine is needed, but it must be part of a broader 
effort, to include eliminating and eradicating mosquitoes wherever 
possible, educating the public on how to protect themselves and 
particularly their children and pregnant women against this disease.
  In Connecticut, there have already been six Zika diagnoses to date. 
There have been none resulting from infections in Connecticut but still 
affecting pregnant women. Our experience documents that any State in 
our country may be eventually affected.
  My plea today is that we use this opportunity to pass emergency 
funding and not deplete or gut a critical resource--the Prevention and 
Public Health Fund. For example, this fund has provided $324 million 
for section 317 immunization grant programs, which States rely on to 
maintain and increase vaccine coverage, particularly for uninsured 
Americans and for needed responses to disease outbreaks. Invading and 
decimating this fund will do lasting damage to the public health of 
America because the Prevention and Public Health Fund is the Federal 
Government's largest single investment in prevention.
  Over the past 5 years, the fund has put more than $6 billion toward 
overdue investments in disease prevention and public health promotion. 
Raiding this fund would wreak havoc on our efforts to reduce chronic 
disease rates, immunize our children, address infectious disease 
outbreaks and, ironically, lower health care costs.
  There is a saying I have heard numerous times on the floor of the 
Senate and at other public forums: An ounce of prevention is worth a 
pound of cure. That lesson has been brought home by our experience with 
Ebola as well as with other public health threats. It is equally true 
of Zika. We should endeavor to eradicate mosquitoes and educate the 
public on the spread of this disease before it causes microcephaly, 
other developmental disabilities, and loss of vision and hearing in 
newborns. It is a threat to adults, as well as to newborns. 
Undercutting the investments we have made to date in public health is 
far from the right course to take. With women and families across the 
country looking to Congress for action, now is the time for us to take 
advantage of the bipartisan measures that are before us.
  I urge that we support those bipartisan measures that will help us 
increase readiness and surveillance, develop a vaccine, and educate 
communities about how we can better protect women and children, as well 
as others, from this vicious and pernicious disease.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Johnson). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the importance of 
fighting the Zika virus and the urgency of being prepared for the full 
range of threats we may face, whether naturally occurring, such as 
Zika, or manmade.
  To some, this may look like a grasshopper, but that is actually a 
mosquito. The question is, Prepared for all hazards? We still do not 
have answers to all the questions surrounding Zika, but we do know 
this: Zika is a very serious public health threat, and we need to act. 
That is why I support the Blunt-Murray amendment to bolster our 
Nation's response to it.
  The CDC has indicated that the mosquitoes responsible for spreading 
the virus could be found in a significant portion of the United States, 
including my State of North Carolina. What makes this virus 
particularly troubling is that it has the potential to cause tragic 
birth defects in babies born to mothers infected with Zika. The virus 
has also been linked with serious neurologic conditions. The sad news 
of reported cases of microcephaly is an urgent call to us that this 
virus poses a very serious threat to pregnant women and their unborn 
children. We need to take action to help these women deliver healthy 
babies and stop the spread of the virus.
  It is concerning to know that we do not have drugs to prevent or 
treat Zika, and we will likely not have them until after the summer 
when mosquitos are present in many of the communities back home.
  Zika underscores the importance of supporting a flexible, all-hazards 
approach and response framework under the Pandemic and All-Hazards 
Preparedness Act--legislation I authored almost a decade ago--to ensure 
our Nation would be better prepared for the range of serious public 
health threats we might face, such as Zika. It also underscores that 
Mother Nature always has the potential to throw us a curveball, this 
time in the form of a virus with the potential for devastating birth 
defects transmitted through a simple mosquito bite. This mosquito-borne 
virus also highlights why we must be prepared with the appropriate 
tools to protect the health of America from situations in which 
infectious diseases are moving from animals to humans.
  Thankfully, because of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, 
we have been better prepared to respond to Zika and other recent 
threats. But this work is never done, and we must always remain 
vigilant when it comes to medical and public health preparedness and 
response. The next threat may be naturally occurring, or it may be the 
result of a deliberate attack. We need to be prepared for all of them.
  After 9/11, Congress established the BioShield Special Reserve Fund 
to encourage the development of countermeasures that meet specific 
requirements for use against chemical, biological, radiological, and 
nuclear agents that the Department of Homeland Security has determined 
pose a material threat against the United States population sufficient 
to affect our national security. These are threats like anthrax, Ebola, 
hemorrhagic fever, and smallpox. Like Zika, the American people expect 
us to be ready to respond to these threats.

[[Page 6097]]

  Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to support the amendment 
offered by my colleagues from Florida because it would gut BioShield. 
The President's fiscal year 2017 budget proposed decreasing BioShield 
by $160 million, and then weeks later, with Zika's emergence, the 
administration proposed raiding the BioShield fund. These actions do 
not instill confidence that the Federal Government is prepared to 
handle these threats and will be a committed partner in these public-
private partnerships--partnerships that are crucial for defeating Zika. 
I want to work with the administration to improve our Nation's 
biodefense preparedness and response, especially with regard to 
emerging infectious diseases, but gutting BioShield is not the answer.
  I also wish to take a moment and talk about the Biomedical Advanced 
Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, as I call it. BARDA is 
currently helping innovators navigate the development of the ``valley 
of death'' by supporting advanced research and development of medical 
countermeasures and spurring innovation, such as platform technologies, 
to ensure that we are as nimble as possible when confronting serious 
public health threats. BARDA is on the frontline of combating Zika 
because it is a linchpin in advanced medical countermeasures.
  It is also critical that we support BARDA in fulfilling its mission. 
The Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense recently issued a report that 
found there are ``serious gaps and inadequacies that continue to leave 
the Nation vulnerable to threats from nature and terrorists alike.''
  We cannot lose our focus on preparing for the threats we have 
identified. By strengthening our work in this area, we will be better 
prepared for the next naturally occurring threat. Regardless of the 
threat, we know the American people expect us to protect them from it 
and to be prepared to combat it. Today the threat is Zika. Two years 
ago the threat was Ebola. And the years before that, it was a novel flu 
strain. We have been here before. We don't know what the next threat 
will be or how it will arise, but by staying focused on identified 
threats and being vigilant to finish what we start, we will be better 
prepared for the next threat, whether naturally occurring or the result 
of a deliberate attack.
  I strongly support the Blunt-Murray Zika amendment because it will 
help protect women, babies, and families threatened by Zika in North 
Carolina and across the United States. It will also ensure that we 
continue to make progress against a full range of threats we may face 
in the future. I believe we must confront the threat of Zika with the 
resources this tragic virus demands and the compassion that women and 
children deserve. The Blunt-Murray amendment does both. I look forward 
to supporting it and continuing to fight to ensure that Americans are 
protected from Zika and all other threats we might face.
  While the Presiding Officer and chairman are here, I might add that 
America is the world's response. We are the ones who funded and 
initiated the cure for Ebola. We are the ones who took the seasonal flu 
variations and modified them to reflect the greatest threat. And 
America will be the one--for the world--that addresses a cure, vaccine, 
or countermeasure for Zika. The good news is that, as a Congress, over 
10 years ago we set up the architecture to be able to be ahead of 
things like Zika and Ebola. Quite frankly, during different 
administrations under different control, we failed to fund the things 
that we recognized we needed to do.
  As we have this crisis and we respond to it, let's also reassure the 
American people that we are going to invest in that architecture and 
that we will be ahead of novel diseases. I call it novel. We have known 
about Zika for over 40 years, and the fact is that technology now 
allows us to address this in a different way. Let's invest in those 
platform technologies. Let's make sure we have an architecture that 
allows advanced development for the vaccines or the countermeasures. 
Let's not let down the American people on the next disease or the next 
threat that we might face.
  I thank the Presiding Officer and the chairman.
  I yield the floor.

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