Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I wish to spend a couple of moments to talk about the Zika virus and our response from Congress to it. There has been a lot of conversation about the Zika virus, both in the media and in a multiple of our committees for months, actually. This is not a new issue that has been brought up. This is an existing issue. The spread of the Zika virus is moving across our hemisphere. It is rapidly spreading in multiple countries to the south of us, and it is moving toward the United States.

As most people know, the Zika virus is carried by a mosquito--a particular type of mosquito. Not all mosquitoes can transmit the Zika virus. This particular type of mosquito can carry the virus from one person when the Zika virus is in their blood. It gets in the mosquito. The mosquito bites someone else and transfers it. The interesting thing that most people don't realize is that the Zika virus for most individuals is not all that difficult or painful to be able to work through.

In their own materials that they have now put out in their response to the Zika virus, the CDC tries to list the symptoms of Zika and what it really means for most individuals. For most individuals, it is something they will have for a few days. They said that for many individuals, they don't even know they have it. It is something similar to having a cold, where they may have some muscle pain and a headache. They may have a fever or a rash, but it goes away after a few days. They are then immune to it for the rest of their life.

In fact, the CDC says that if you have it, the treatment they list for the Zika virus--obviously, they always suggest that you check in with your doctor. But the common treatment from CDC is to get plenty of rest, drink fluids, and take Tylenol. It is not something that most people should be afraid of unless you are pregnant, but the risk of birth defects is astronomical.

Now, not everyone who is pregnant and gets the Zika virus also has birth defects, but for those that have, it can be very, very serious. This is to be taken seriously, but it is not a new issue as well.

The Zika virus has been known to be around since the 1950s. It has moved through multiple different countries in multiple different regions. In the United States, though, we have yet to have a single case in the continental United States that originated in the United States. These are individuals who traveled to countries south of us in Central America or South America and picked up the virus there or in Puerto Rico or in some of the other areas in the Caribbean and then have come back to the United States. But it is yet to have a transfer, that we know of, from any individual within the United States to another person in the United States.

Again, that doesn't belittle the issue, but I want to put it in the context of where we are. We are at the early stages of dealing with this as U.S. citizens. In Puerto Rico and other areas, it is very advanced and there are hundreds of cases there. Now the determination is this: What do we do?

The CDC has already stepped up, trying to intervene and trying to find ways to be able to develop a vaccine for it, which they feel confident they can do. I met with the Director of the CDC not long ago. He feels very confident they will be able to have a vaccine within a couple of years. But then we have a couple of years that we are dealing with in the process just for the development of the vaccine and then the distribution of that vaccine.

The main thing that can be done right now is actually putting down mosquito populations. It is getting into areas where there is rapid advancement of mosquitoes and actually putting pesticides in those areas to greatly diminish the population of mosquitoes. It is developing better testing for Zika. It is getting out the opportunity in different health departments around the country to say: How are we going to evaluate this and how do we know if someone just has a fever and a rash, if that is something else related to heat, or if that something related to Zika? The CDC is engaging in all of those things.

In the middle of this, the White House has requested almost $2 billion in what they are calling an emergency request for Zika. I do believe there should be a response to Zika, and we should aggressively lean in. The last thing we should do is sit around and wait until the Zika virus spreads across the United States and affects many of these pregnant moms who are out there. Then we have birth defects because of our inactivity in the days ahead. But almost $2 billion in an emergency request is interesting to me because for a lot of it they haven't given us great detail on it of really what all of that will engage. But they have said they need this large amount of money.

I have to tell you that I am a little bit skeptical when anyone comes and says: It is an emergency. I need $2 billion, and I will tell you what it is for later.

We went through this with the Ebola funding, where there was a $5 billion request for Ebola funding. Two years later, they spent about $2.5 billion of that. Recently, the administration transferred half a billion dollars of that funding for Ebola into treatment and discovery for Zika. So they have already reprogrammed some of that money and have started to be able to move it over.

I would ask just a couple of things of this body as we consider how we are going to handle Zika. One is to treat it seriously. Though for most people it is not a serious issue, if you are pregnant, it is serious. We should treat it seriously.

The second thing is that we should do this appropriations in the normal appropriations process. I do not think we need to have additional debt spending. We can reprogram existing funds to be able to deal with this. We also need real detail of how this money is going to be spent so that we don't allocate dollars and then find out later how they were going to be spent. We have a responsibility as Congress to know how American tax dollars are being spent, and I think my skepticism is justified.

Let me give you just a quick idea. Right now, if we are going to deal with actually funding this area--which I believe we should--then we should begin with allowing the Department of State, HHS, and USAID to have transfer authority within their existing accounts to be able to address this. These three agencies currently have $86 billion in what they call unobligated balances from previous years that they already have right now--$86 billion. With this much money lying around, there is absolutely no need to ask the American people to pay an additional $1 billion on top of the originally already obligated--overobligated-- and bloated budget.

The transfer authority I would ask for would be accompanied by a comprehensive spending plan that requires the administration to detail exactly how it plans to use these funds and then report out any obligations to match up with the original spending plan. Before we write a blank check to the administration, I believe the American people should actually know how this is being spent.

Now, there are some individuals who would say this is an emergency. We just need to add $1 billion more in debt and figure out how to pay for it later.

I would disagree. We have transfer authority. This is not new. In fact, if you go back to 2009, President Obama requested transfer authority to HHS to deal with the H1N1 panic. Remember when the big panic was about swine flu and about H1N1 in 2009? As a nation, we stood up and addressed some of these issues.

At that time the President made a very specific request for transfer authority to deal with this. That is not any different than what I am saying right now. I don't understand how this is different than how we were dealing with H1N1. Right now we have to have additional spending on top of everything else, but in 2009 it was entirely appropriate to be able to reprogram funds.

Again, this is not new. As I have mentioned before about for the Ebola emergency supplementals, the President has already taken about $600 million from Ebola and transferred that over to Zika.

It is interesting to note that in March President Obama reprogrammed $500 million from the Economic Support Fund, which is designated by Congress to combat infectious diseases. He took $500 million from the fund to combat infectious diseases and instead reprogrammed it over for the Green Climate Fund. So he took half a billion dollars from the infectious diseases account and used it instead for the Green Climate Fund--internationally.

He has done this before. In fact, it was just days ago that the President took $8 million out of a different account and reprogrammed it to purchase almost $9 million of heavy water from Iran.

This body, of all bodies, has the responsibility to be able to not only deal with the health emergencies that are happening around the world but also the fiscal issues that we have in our Nation. We can do both. There is no reason to do debt spending when the money is there right now to be reprogrammed. We do not have to break the budget caps, and we do not have to accelerate other areas of spending just to do what is our responsibility. We should do the responsible thing in dealing with Zika. We should also assume the responsibility we have to take care of the American taxpayer at the same time.

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