Remember that film about Planned Parenthood selling children’s brains? That was fake.
But this is real. Right now. Right now. Children are under an incredibly serious threat in the United States. Seven hundred people in Puerto Rico are already infected with the Zika virus, and last week saw the first case of microcephaly on the island.
Zika’s known to cause a range of birth defects, including devastating brain damage that results in a smaller-than-normal head, a condition known medically as microcephaly.
President Obama requested $1.9 billion to fight the threat of Zika three months ago. Republican senators have delayed a vote in that chamber until this week, but finally voted on Tuesday to at least move a solution forward.
With the summer mosquito-season fast approaching, the Senate voted Tuesday to advance a bipartisan compromise that would provide $1.1 billion to help public health officials battle the Zika virus as it begins to threaten the continental United States.
But given any chance, you can bet that the oh-so-concerned about unborn children far right Freedom Caucus-dominated House lunatics will find a batshit response that completely ignores the real threat. And they did.
House Republicans are renaming a bill that fights environmental regulations on pesticides and reframing it to fight the Zika virus.
With the national spotlight on Zika, and the GOP under harsh criticism for not taking bold action against the virus, Republicans are using the anti-Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation bill to show they care about the Zika fight.
Republicans have attached a much-reduced funding package to this bill, with a total of $622M. So they’re offering less than one-third of the necessary funds, and attaching it to a move to cripple the Clean Water Act that ensures it won’t pass.
That’s how concerned Republicans actually are about children, born or unborn. You want a horror film about selling children’s brains? Just check out C-SPAN as the House GOP sells childrens’ brains in a chance to take a pot shot at the EPA.
Even Marco Rubio pleaded with his fellow senators to stop obstructing this funding.
"Let's not play with fire here," said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who pleaded with senators to support an amendment he offered with Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., to provide the full $1.9 billion in funding that the Obama administration and health officials sought. "This is a devastating disease."
But on the House side?
A spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted the renaming as “dishonest.”
“In a brazenly political act, the Republican leadership is trying to mask gutting the Clean Water Act as having something to do with fighting Zika,” Drew Hammill said in a statement.
“This bill has nothing to do with Zika and everything to do with Republicans’ relentless special interest attacks on the Clean Water Act,” he said. “It will do nothing to stem the growing threat of the Zika virus.”
The idea that malaria was nearly extinct until the EPA somehow stopped that completely safe chemical, DDT, has been part of right-wing mythology for decades. This whole effort is directed at the black helicopter crowd—which is the real audience of the Freedom Caucus.