Zika Is Coming This Year, So House Republicans Set

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Zika Is Coming This Year, So House Republicans Set Aside Money to Fight it Next Year

Fiscal responsibility, people!

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BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
MAY 19, 2016

The United States House of Representatives is now a danger to the public health.

The spread of the Zika virus is a serious threat. Acting on the advice of people who know more about epidemic disease than do the various Rotarian mud-fences who make up the House majority caucus, the president has asked for $1.1 billion to fight the disease.

As Reuters tells us, the House majority isn't going to be fooled by your so-called expert opinion. We can do this on the cheap.

On Tuesday, the Senate cleared the way for expected approval by the chamber on Thursday of $1.1 billion to fight the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects. Unlike the Senate legislation, the House bill requires that the $622.1 million be fully offset with spending cuts elsewhere.

Let me guess. The very same assholes who wanted to offset FEMA funds for Hurricane Sandy with spending cuts that they NEVER require when their own States need help. Special place in hell, please, for these short sighted hypocritical pr*cks.

Many conservative Republicans in the House refuse to approve Zika funds that would add to federal budget deficits, while Democrats and some Senate Republicans favor treating the problem as an emergency that would not have to be financed with spending cuts.

Fck the deficit. People got no jobs. People got no money. And some people got this disease. Apparently, small minds are multi-causal.

You don't need the Zika virus. Sometimes, you just need enough votes in Bugtussle to get you elected. I mean, Jesus H. Christ on a respirator, even Marco Rubio thinks this is nuts.

From The Chicago Tribune:

"We can quite frankly do much better than what the House is proposing," Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said Tuesday on the Senate floor.

Here's the way the scam works. The White House responded to the diddling of the House Republicans by using some of the money that is still there that was appropriated to fight the last public-health crisis—namely, the Ebola outbreak of 2014.

In return, the House Repubicans promised to replenish the Ebola money at a later date, possibly in celebration of the inauguration of President Barron Trump for his second term.

In other words, let's rob from sick Peter to pay deathly ill Paul. From CNN:

"We will have hundreds of millions of dollars in that bill for next year's Zika response, so to suggest that somebody is being shortchanged—the money is just being prudently laid out at the appropriate pace and paid for along the way," said Oklahoma GOP Rep. Tom Cole, who chairs a key spending panel allocating money to the Department of Health and Human Services.

(And, not for nothing, but, while Ebola is somewhat under control, according to the World Health Organization, it isn't going away either. Damn viruses just don't understand the need to rein in government spending.)

The Deficit, and its fetishists, have gone a long way towards convincing the public that government can't do anything, which has sort of been the point of it all along.

However, it's one thing to Deficit-mouth on long-term projects and quite another to do it in the face of a sudden natural disaster or an immediate public health emergency.

And you may recall that the House's response to the Ebola crisis was to temporize about funding a response while screaming about cutting off flights to Africa and knuckling people under the immigration laws.

Chris Christie maintained a cool head by tossing a nurse into quarantine. Sounds like a plan. Let's quarantine the House side of the Capitol for a spell, at least until democracy gets better.

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