WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has cautioned top lawmakers that continued gridlock over legislation to combat the Zika virus could delay research and development of a vaccine to protect against Zika and tests to detect it.
The warning came in a letter July 12 from White House budget chief Shaun Donovan and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and says that failure by Congress to pass anti-Zika funds before exiting Washington for its extended summer recess would “significantly impede the administration’s ability to prepare for and respond “ to the Zika threat this summer and beyond.
The delay in funding vaccine development is perhaps the most damaging result of a divided Washington’s inability to agree on an anti-Zika funding bill five months after President Barack Obama’s request.
“It’s going to take that much longer to prove that the vaccine works, “ said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, who says testing next January on a promising vaccine faces delays. “If it takes that much longer to prove that it works then you take that much longer to get it out to the people who need it. “
The impasse on Zika shows no signs of softening, even though taking a seven-week vacation without addressing the problem could be politically perilous for both Republicans controlling Congress and Democrats blocking Republicans’ $1.1 billion take-it-or-leave-it measure to battle the virus.
Democrats last month filibustered a GOP-drafted Zika measure, largely over provisions in the bill to block Planned Parenthood from receiving money. A revote is expected to produce the same result this week, but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has rejected efforts to reopen the measure, which faces a veto threat from the White House.
Obama requested $1.9 billion in February to battle Zika, but Congress has moved slowly in response. The Senate passed a bipartisan $1.1 billion measure in May while the House adopted a smaller, more partisan measure. The House-Senate compromise, worked out by top GOP leaders last month in talks that froze out Democrats, was blocked by Senate Democrats two weeks ago on a mostly party-line filibuster vote.
A Senate Democratic aide said Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Monday night broached a compromise with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to separate the Zika issue from a veterans funding bill, strip away the Planned Parenthood-related provision and dump a provision that would ease rules on pesticide spraying.
