It’s not enough for Republicans to hijack Zika funding and use it as an excuse to gut the Clean Water Act. Before they’ll agree to save the lives of both children and adults threatened by Zika, they want another payment. Only this payment is also in lives.
Truck driver Dana Logan tried on Wednesday to recount a crash that decapitated two fathers and two children, hoping to convince Congress to stop weakening rules that require truckers to get rest.
She couldn’t do it. A dozen years after the fatigued driver of another truck fell asleep and drove into an SUV stuck in traffic behind her rig on a Texas highway, Logan was still too devastated to finish talking about it. …
What the Logans and other safety advocates are worried about are measures that would allow truck drivers to work more than 80 hours a week, tacked onto to separate appropriations bills in the House and the Senate.
So… guess which bill? It’s a bill that not only provides major infrastructure funding, but also happens to be where the funding to fight Zika is attached. Why did the Republican leadership decide to glue important funding measures together? Because that makes it a perfect vessel to carry anything they want. Anything at all.
The new inserted policy provisions represent a trend over the last three years of trucking industry interests using must-pass spending bills to win regulatory concessions that are opposed by most safety advocates and likely could not pass as normal stand-alone bills. In this case, not only do the bills fund major parts of the government, they provide cash to fight Zika.
Hey, nice little government you’ve got there. And you value your babies, right? So, give us just a few more hours behind the wheel. Why, it’ll barely kill anybody. Sign here.
Putting together multiple issues in a funding bill to make it into clear “must pass” legislation turns it into a magnet for these kind of provisions that could never win a vote on their own. It’s not a coincidence that Republicans have held off voting on Zika funding until the crisis has already cost at least one life and destroyed at least one American child with microcephaly. The more desperate people are for protection against this threat, the more of their lobbyists’ wish lists they can add to the bill.
There have been exactly zero congressional hearings on the proposed trucking rule changes. None. That testimony Dana Logan gave about the accident that ended four lives? That was an attempt to get Congress to at least listen to drivers before extending the hours. It didn’t work.
Democrats tried this week to cut Zika funding into a separate bill. That was blocked by Republicans who know a gravy train when they see it.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) took to the floor Wednesday to argue that the larger bill could easily get tied up in Congress’ dysfunctional process, and be stalled until the fall — well after the money will be needed. The Zika spending should be broken out, they argued.
But Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) objected, and instead asked her to modify her request in a way that Republicans might prefer.
What did Cornyn’s “preferred language” include? All together now: gutting Obamacare.
The difference between Republican panic over Ebola and Republican slow-walking Zika funding? With Ebola, Republicans knew as well as anyone there was no real threat at that time, so they could play it up as much as they liked; turn it into another excuse to claim President Obama was “weak” for not closing the airports, sounding the alarms, and shooting a missile at someone.
With Zika there really is a crisis. And a real threat to real children? That’s something they’re not going to waste. That’s an opportunity that doesn’t come along every day. Clean Water Act? Trucking Safety? Hell, this thing might be worth a pipeline. Or maybe a few million acres of oil leases. Work the phones, boys. It’s fundraising season.
Oh, eventually they’ll pass some funding for fighting mosquitoes. Not enough to do the job—that would be effective government, and if there’s one thing they can’t allow, it’s a government that even appears to be working—but they’ll pass enough to go home and take credit for it. But it’s not going to come without a price.
Meanwhile, over in the House, they’ve actually passed their bill which provides less than 1/3 of the requested funds.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) repeatedly took to the floor on Wednesday to reject claims from Democrats – as well as some Republicans in vulnerable Southern states – that the bill will insufficiently fund the U.S. response to the virus threat.
“This is wholly adequate, it’s more than adequate in terms of money,” Rogers said minutes before the vote.
The bill gets it’s money by gutting funds already allocated for fighting Ebola in Africa. But most of the bill simply comes from re-naming a bill to relax regulation of pesticides.
House Republicans are renaming a bill that fights environmental regulations on pesticides and reframing it to fight the Zika virus. ...
The pesticide bill, introduced last year by Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), would prohibit the EPA from requiring permits to spray pesticides near bodies of water as long as the application has been approved by a state and the pesticides themselves are federally approved.
Steal some Ebola funding. Slap a little lipstick on a pesticide bill. Call it a done.
Just wait. There are still Senate votes and a whole conference committee ahead. If Republicans wait until enough people are infected, maybe they really can get Democrats to agree to weaken Obamacare.