On Wednesday, James Hodge, in U.S. News and World Report, wrote that Congress needs to pass funding to combat the Zika virus. He did not note that the House of Representatives did pass legislation. The Senate voted twice to fund the fight against Zika and every Democrat, but one, voted to block the passage of the bill.
Democrats objected that the bill was not exactly what they wanted. It may not have been, but it was 1.1 billion additional dollars to address Zika, taking care of immediate and intermediate needs. It would be wonderful if everyone got everything they wanted all of the time, but we must be able to compromise. The inability of Senate Democrats to compromise has led to the current impasse. Now Zika is in Florida.
As a senator representing a Gulf State that is at a high risk for Zika outbreak, and as a doctor who has worked in public health for nearly 30 years, I am highly aware of the importance of our response. It is time we stop playing politics with the well-being of American citizens and pass funding to combat Zika.
However, Zika is just the latest ‘surprise’ we are scrambling to deal with. Every few years, when an outbreak of disease occurs someplace in the world, media coverage increases, public panic grows and in response Congress scrambles to deal with the possible threat. All too often, political ambitions and attempted point scoring gets in the way of needed legislation and our response is delayed.
This does beg the question of what can be done in the future to avoid such politically driven decision-making that does not cooperate with that which is right. Bipartisan legislation that I and Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, have drafted, with others cosponsoring, would create a permanent, emergency fund that would be immediately available for response efforts upon declaration of a public health emergency by the Health and Human Services secretary. While still maintaining congressional oversight, our bill would make sure that funding is available before outbreaks of disease like Zika get out of hand and keep politics from delaying our response.
[Source: US news]
