There are now 500 Zika-infected pregnant women in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control, with 15 babies born with birth defects and six lost pregnancies. But that's President Obama's fault, says Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who continues to refuse a clean funding request from the White House to respond to the Zika threat. Why, asks McConnell, isn't Obama taking money from other public health priorities?
McConnell sent a letter Friday to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell demanding details on how the administration will fund a reported Obamacare enrollment campaign, while asking "why it believes that such funds would be better spent propping up the failed Obamacare exchanges than other important public health priorities—such as preventing the spread of Zika."
"If the Administration has identified alternative sources of funding for this Obamacare advertising campaign, wouldn't those funds be better allocated to other public health priorities, such as Zika prevention, response, and treatment activities?" McConnell wrote.
For one thing, the Department of Health and Human Services says, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health—the agencies charged with fighting infectious disease outbreaks—are not permitted to take money out of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pot, where the money for Obamacare outreach resides. You'd think it would be part of the Senate Majority Leader's job description to know how federal money works, but doing his actual job has never been particularly high on McConnell's list.
For another thing, says HHS, the "last person who should criticize HHS for not being focused on Zika is the Senate Republican leader who has refused to compromise in order to get a clean, bipartisan funding bill to the President’s desk." Yeah, that.
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