The communication stream between the White House and Congress these days is more like a trickle, and most of that is simply Congress passing on their 4,323rd symbolic We Don’t Like You to the president. However, there are still a few things being done on Capitol Hill. They’re just being done really, really poorly.
The Obama administration requested $1.9 billion in emergency funding to respond to the looming public-health threat. The White House noted at the time, “This sort of falls in the category of things that shouldn’t break down along party lines.”
Sky blue, said the Obama White House. Water wet. Big epidemics featuring dangerous rapidly spreading diseases that cause devastating birth defects, bad. So you know what’s coming next.
But that’s exactly what happened anyway. Congressional Republicans responded to the request by telling the administration to use $600 million that had been allocated to combat Ebola. The trouble, of course, is that this money (a) is far short of the $1.9 billion needed, and (b) still being used to address Ebola in West Africa.
At that point, the CDC stepped in to declare that the situation was really serious, and that Congress needed to allocate the funds. Followed by multiple other health organizations stepping in to say that the situation was extremely dangerous, and that Congress should allocate the funds. Followed by the OMB reminding Congress that the ebola funds were kinda sorta being used to fight ebola, and they should really allocate the funds.
Which was followed by …
Roll Call reported that Congress did pass a bill, intended to create incentives for drug makers to speed work on Zika treatments, but it allocates none of $1.9 billion the administration says is necessary. It’s reached the point at which the White House has stopped being polite and started getting real.
Press Secretary Josh Earnest compared a Zika bill the House sent to President Barack Obama’s desk on Tuesday to “passing out umbrellas in the event of a hurricane.” […]
Okay. Please synchronize your watches. Fox News, every Republican pundit, every GOP candidate, and every member of the House Freedom! brigade that voted to not allocate any funds, will begin blaming President Obama for failing to address the Zika threat in 3 … 2 … 1 ...