Zika crisis grows so members of Congress decide to go on vacation
“Zika Arrives in Florida,” read the headline to a July 30 editorial in The New York Times.
The day before, federal public health officials had reported that four people in Miami had contracted the virus. Likely cause? Being bitten by our very own mosquitoes, not those big, bad Brazilian mosquitoes.
That was, give or take a couple of days, a month ago. In the ensuing weeks cases of local transmission have increased in number and geographical reach. Yet the federal government has done nothing.
Republicans in Congress are once again playing the extortion game with Obama—and gambling with the lives of American children—by refusing to fund the administration’s $1.1 billion request to fight Zika unless a provision aimed at striking a blow at Planned Parenthood is included in the bill.
The GOP Congress has tried blackmail several times before in order to advance one or another of its ideological crusades, including by shutting down the federal government and by threatening to allow the United States to default on its debt.
The Obama administration quickly found out the problem with blackmail. The blackmailers always come back for more. So Obama stopped giving in to Republican extortion, and weeks ago the members of Congress left town without funding a response to Zika. Meanwhile, the mosquitoes and the virus they carry have been having a field day, with 43 local transmissions reported since Congress went on vacation.
Is there nothing so fundamental or sacred—the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, American motherhood—that it will stop the Republicans from using the blackmail move for ideological gain? Apparently not.
Thus Saturday, in his weekly presidential address, Obama once again was forced to call on Congress to do the right thing and fund the fight against Zika. Below is the White House press release.
This week, President Obama called on Republicans in Congress to take action and vote to fund the Administration’s response to the Zika virus. In February, the President asked Congress to fund emergency resources, including mosquito control, fast-tracking diagnostics tests and vaccines, tracking the spread of the virus, and monitoring women and babies with Zika. Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress have failed to take action on this issue.
So the President continues to direct his Administration do what it can without help from Congress, with the primary focus of protecting pregnant women and families planning to have children.
Things have gotten bad enough that our Republican governor Rick Scott, who has shown more concern with the interests of big corporations than those of the average Floridian, is going to Washington to lobby Congress for Zika funding. That’s a good thing, given that Florida is ground zero for Zika in the continental United States and the governor so far has spent his time unfairly complaining about the alleged lack of response by federal officials.
The blame falls squarely on his party. Scott should have been on Capitol Hill before Congress went home and raised hell then with his fellow Republicans. Shame them into releasing the money instead of putting us behind the curve.
Now Florida is facing not only a public health crisis but two separate threats to its tourist economy: Zika and polluted beaches.
Recent reporting indicates Congress may be softening somewhat on allocating Zika funds. Great. Now Scott can ride into Washington and take credit for bringing home what is likely to be a glass half full.
The Republican non-response to the Zika problem reflects at least two key components of the mindset of the contemporary Republican party.
Today’s GOP has a real problem with that clause in the U.S. constitution that says that, among other things, the government the Founders were creating should “provide for the general Welfare.” Not to protect the wealth of the economic elite. Not to protect the welfare of the people threatened by a disease that deforms the brains of babies and causes a lifetime of suffering for parents only if an ideological cause can be advanced.
A lack of basic compassion is the other aspect. During the worst years of the AIDS disaster, the Reagan administration stayed silent and impassive. Zika won’t wreak the devastation of AIDS but the principle is the same. And public health is only one of the myriad of ways that the GOP has shown its fundamental lack of compassion, including the elimination of the welfare program itself (with a major assist from Bill Clinton).
Perhaps the specter of a Donald Trump presidency will be the catalyst for the American people to finally turn their backs on government of the few, by the few, and for the few.
[Photo: JENTAVERY/Flickr]
