Zika Supplemental Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last week, the Senate approved a compromise deal negotiated by Senators Blunt, Murray, and others to provide $1.1 billion in emergency supplemental Zika funding.

The White House, Dr. Frieden of the Centers for Disease Control, CDC, and Dr. Collins of the National Institute of Health, NIH, told us they needed $1.9 billion to fight this public health crisis, but the Republican caucus disagreed with these infectious disease experts.

I am not sure why Republicans do not believe the world's best scientists and health officials when they articulate a clear, comprehensive plan to stop Zika. Perhaps they do not appreciate the severity of this public health threat?

When we were faced with cases of Ebola within the United States, we reacted swiftly and decisively. We funded 87 percent, $5.4 billion, of the administration's request in a total of just 38 days.

Well, now the same number of people in the U.S. and U.S. territories have died from Ebola, as have from Zika--one.

Yet more than 91 days past the date of the formal Zika request, we are debating between just 33 percent, as the House approved, and 58 percent of this request? I fear my Republican colleagues are underestimating the threat from the Zika virus on our Nation's pregnant women.

We know that Zika causes microcephaly, a devastating and tragic birth defect that causes babies to be born with serious neurological complications.

And it seems that every day we are learning something worse. Just yesterday, a CDC and Harvard University study found that pregnant women who are infected with Zika in their first trimester face up to a 13 percent chance of their baby being born with microcephaly.

We also know that the CDC is currently monitoring nearly 300 pregnant women in the United States who have the Zika virus.

The CDC estimates that the lifetime costs for a baby born with this tragic disease is between $1 million to $10 million, not to mention the considerable emotional toll of this disease on families.

Sadly, it doesn't take many cases of microcephaly to begin costing us more financially than the paltry amount House Republicans are committing to fight Zika.

But Zika doesn't just cause microcephaly. It is also linked to other neurological diseases that aggressively destroy brain tissue. It is also linked to Guillain-Bare syndrome, an autoimmune disorder than can cause paralysis and death.

What about the impact of maternal stress on a baby? I cannot imagine the anxiety that pregnant women, especially those in the southern part of this country and in Puerto Rico, must feel right now. Well, through genetics and neuroscience, we know for a fact that a mother's stress during pregnancy can shape her child's gene expression, leading to poor birth outcomes and psychological and physical disorders.

If you call yourself pro-life, why would you not want to do everything you can to protect these babies from being subjected to elevated risk for serious birth defects?

This is a train we have seen coming for miles and miles, and Republicans are refusing to step out of the way.

It is bad enough that House and Senate Republicans are refusing to provide the funding our health experts say is necessary to fight this disease, but now House Republicans are insisting on cutting Ebola funding to do it.

Last week, the House passed a partisan bill that would have provided a mere $622 million to fight Zika. That is a third of what the experts say they need, and they offset the costs by raiding Ebola money.

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers called it ``excess funding left over from the Ebola outbreak.'' That couldn't be further from the truth.

I recently spoke with the CDC Director Tom Frieden who told me some troubling news. Last month, there was another cluster of Ebola cases in West Africa, about a dozen new cases. What they have now found is that the Ebola virus can stay in a man's system for up to 1 year, allowing it to be spread to others.

Ebola may not be front page news in the United States right now, but that is largely because our CDC disease detectives are on the ground in West Africa, nearly 100 of them, fighting to contain its spread.

If we keep stealing the funding that enables them to do their job, Ebola could soon again be front page news.

Since Republicans have been dragging their feet on Zika funding, the White House was forced, as a last ditch, stop-gap requirement, to transfer $510 million away from the Ebola response to fund the immediate response needs for Zika.

As the White House's Ebola czar, Ron Klain, said last week, ``we are taking a fire hydrant out of the ground in one place and moving it someplace else to fight a different fire.''

This Ebola money that was moved was the CDC's funds for the next 2 fiscal years, funds that are to be used to build a frontline defense for our own country. It invests in the public health capacity of partner nations, so we aren't waiting for local outbreaks to hit our shores as global epidemics.

These ``leftover'' funds are being used to develop and test vaccine candidates for Ebola, and late-stage clinical trials are moving forward, but they need those funds to continue validating these vaccines.

Now House Republicans want to drain these Ebola funds again.

We already know what happens when we have to take money from one place in the public health budget and move it elsewhere. State and local health departments lost $44 million in CDC preparedness grants earlier this year because of a reprogramming of funds that were moved to high-risk Zika States. Illinois lost $2 million in total. A recent survey of State health departments said that this $44 million cut will result in staffing reductions and could hamper Zika preparations by forcing a reduction in laboratory services and epidemiological activities. So to be clear, States at lower risk for Zika, like Illinois, lost money to States at higher risk like Mississippi, Texas, and Florida. And this cut will mean that Illinois and other States that lost money are now less prepared for Zika.

Public health preparedness is not done with a wave of a magic wand. It requires steady investments in people, lab testing, and epidemiology and dedicated research and clinical trials.

We did not require our Ebola, H1N1, or avian influenza supplementals to be offset, and we certainly should not begin down that dangerous path now.

As with our response to Ebola here in the U.S., proven public health protocols will work against Zika, but we need to listen to the experts and fund the needed response.

That means we cannot wait any longer to pass an emergency Zika funding supplemental.

Some Republicans have said this money can wait until October 1 when our new fiscal year starts. Do you think mosquitos know when the new fiscal year begins and will wait to buzz and bite until then?

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend. I don't know about you, but in my hometown and across Illinois that means people will be outside and having barbecues. Then comes the Fourth of July and, soon after, Labor Day weekend.

We do not have time to wait around. We need to approve the Senate's Zika supplemental as a down payment, and we need to send it to the President's desk this week.

Over 1,380 people across 44 States, Washington DC, and 3 U.S. territories, including over 279 pregnant women, have contracted Zika.

To my Republican colleagues, I would say: stop playing games, support our States and Federal health officials, approve the money, and send it to the President's desk. We cannot wait any longer. Pregnant women cannot wait any longer.

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