THE HILL
By Cristina Marcos and Jordain Carney
Congress is poised to leave Washington for almost two months at the end of this week without passing funding to combat the Zika virus or completing work on spending bills to avoid a government shutdown.
Both the House and Senate are slated to adjourn by Friday for the parties’ presidential nominating conventions later this month, and won’t return into session until after Labor Day.
That means big-ticket items like finding a compromise on Zika funding might have to wait until the fall. Even then, lawmakers will likely have another time crunch when they come back in September since many will be eager to leave Washington as soon as possible to return to the campaign trail.\
Public health experts have warned that the mosquitoes carrying Zika will populate over the summer and exacerbate the spread of the virus, which can cause birth defects.
Both sides blame the other for the stalemate over Zika. Democrats oppose language in the $1.1 billion package that blocks funds for Planned Parenthood and weakens Clean Water Act regulations, while Republicans say that lawmakers should pass the measure as-is before it’s too late. The House passed the bill late last month but its been stalled by Senate Democrats.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a senior appropriator, said Friday he doubted the GOP’s latest version of the Zika funding bill would clear the Senate this week. “I think it’ll have to come back to the House,” he said, likely after recess.
Cole dismissed the administration’s claims that the response would be hampered if Congress doesn’t pass funding before leaving for the summer break.
“They’ll still have the funding, to do whatever they want to do, but we should get this nailed down,” he said.
With only a handful of days left, Democrats are threatening to block the Zika money—and the larger spending bill it’s attached to—but also any appropriations bill.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) sent a letter to McConnell and Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), the Appropriations Committee chairman, last week accusing them of trying to break a two-year budget agreement.
“Without strong, public assurance that you are committed to honoring the core tenets of the bipartisan compromise – including fair funding, parity, and a rejection of poison pill riders – through the completion of the full appropriations process, we will no longer be able to support proceeding to new appropriations bills,” they wrote in the letter.
The senators point to the Zika money, arguing the GOP-supported deal “raises serious questions about how you would conduct a conference between House and Senate bills, and your willingness to reject poison pill riders.”
To drive home their point Democrats blocked the Defense Department appropriations bill late Thursday night. It’s the third appropriations bill to be derailed in recent weeks in the Senate.
McConnell voted against the legislation, which could allow him to bring it up for a second vote before the Senate leaves at the end of the week for the summer recess.
During a tense exchange between the two Senate leaders late last week, McConnell slammed Democrats as the “dysfunction party.”
“What the Democratic leader is saying is the Republican Senate needs to guarantee what the... House will do as a condition for passing a bill through the Senate,” McConnell said. “That’s not the way it works.”
Congress is all but certain at this point to turn to yet another stopgap measure to avoid a government shutdown when it returns in September.
The House is expected to take up a 2017 spending bill for the Interior Department before leaving for recess, but it’ll only be the fifth appropriations measure to pass the chamber this year.