The Zika bill put forward by the Republicans is still lodged in the Senate. And the reason for that is painfully clear.
Republicans added a rider to the bill that would make the Puerto Rican division of Planned Parenthood, Profamilias, ineligible to get the money. Democrats see that language as a poison pill, just as Republicans knew they would. Cue the legislative deadlock.
This isn’t “both sides do it.” It’s someone on the Republican side who deliberately slipped in a last-minute addition knowing it would stall the bill. For no other purpose than to stall the bill. Knowing that it would prevent funding that’s needed to save lives and protect the health of children. Knowing that Puerto Rico is where this funding is needed most. There are currently over 15,000 cases of Zika in Puerto Rico, including over 1,000 pregnant women.
Democrats asked for nothing in the Zika funding bill but Zika funding. But Republicans chose to play games with people’s lives.
On the bright side, that means that there’s someone to blame for this mess: whoever added the rider to the bill.
No one in Congress will say who that person is.
Maybe they thought they would score political points over the summer by pointing at how those Democrats were “blocking the bill.” Maybe they knew just how the media would jump in with a reliable “this is both sides’ fault” story. Which they did.
But the truth is that someone stopped Zika funding, and they did it deliberately. With malice aforethought. Someone out there is a G-D bastard who is willing to kill, maim, and impose a lifetime of misery just for the sheer asshole joy of it. Because they knew from the outset that the effect of this rider would be to stall a bill that was desperately needed to save American lives.
Who is the unforgivable jackass who committed this act of legislative terrorism? There’s a short list of suspects.
The rider was added after a brief meeting by a 30-person bipartisan committee. Only after the meeting, something distinctly not bipartisan occurred.
... Hal Rogers, the Kentuckian congressman, filed the conference report on June 22 without the approval (or signatures) of any Democrats on the committee. According to Dennis, that’s highly unusual.
Who were the Republicans in the room?
- Senator Susan Collins (Maine)
- Senator Mark Kirk (Illinois)
- Senator Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)
- Senator John Hoeven (North Dakota)
- Senator John Boozman (Arkansas)
- Senator Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia)
- Senator Thad Cochran (Mississippi)
- Senator Roy Blunt (Missouri)
- Senator Lindsey Graham (South Carolina)
- Congressman Hal Rogers (Kentucky)
- Congressman Tom Cole (Oklahoma)
- Congresswoman Kay Granger (Texas)
- Congressman Charlie Dent (Pennsylvania)
- Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (Nebraska)
- Congressman Thomas J. Rooney (Florida)
- Congressman David Valadao (California)
- Congresswoman Martha Roby (Alabama)
Add one more name to this list.
Teresa Davis, communications director for Congressman Tom Cole, confirmed the Republican conferees, and added Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s name to the mix. “The leaders determine what happens regardless of whether or not they are members of the conference committee,” Dennis says. OK, so now we’re working with 18 names instead of 30.
That’s 18 names. One of them is the author. The others are covering for the author. And every day that goes past is only adding to the damage.
Britt Logan, press secretary for Republican conferee Senator Mark Kirk, says in an email that he heard the author “was in the House.” If that’s true (and that’s a big “if”), that leaves only Rogers, Cole, Granger, Fortenberry, Rooney, Roby, and Valadao.
Rogers is the one who put out the conference report. So he’s a prime suspect. As is Alabama Congresswoman Martha Robey, who wrote an op-ed playing the “Democrats are blocking the bill” game and praising the rider.
“It is simply not the job of the federal government to fund the nation's largest abortion provider, and it is unconscionable that Senate Democrats would block funding aimed to help protect pregnant women and babies because their friends at Planned Parenthood don't get a cut.”
Neither one of these legislators may be the author of this execrable bit of purposeful child endangerment, but they’re a good place to start. If you’re a constituent of either one, call them. Ask them.