Just in case it wasn’t abundantly clear how far House Republicans will go to achieve their extreme political objectives, look no further than the Zika “compromise,” where No-Show Congressman Lee Zeldin and House Republicans callously used a looming public health crisis to advance their goal of undermining women’s health by defunding Planned Parenthood.
It’s us against Zika — whose side is Congress on?
By Editorial Board
June 23, 2016
[…]Thursday, Republicans who control the House pushed through a bill to combat the Zika virus that is a totem to their favored causes and a poke in the eye of Democrats. More than four months after President Obama requested nearly $1.9 billion in emergency funding to deal with a public-health emergency, the House voted for $1.1 billion but saddled it with unnecessary partisan baubles. This may further delay action against the mosquito-borne virus that can cause severe fetal birth defects.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) declared that the bill, approved along party lines 239 to 171, was the product of “careful and thorough deliberations.” But in fact, the Republicans compromised only with themselves and took to the House floor a bill that lacked bipartisan support.
[…]The legislation would limit payments for birth-control services, an indirect way of defunding Planned Parenthood, long a GOP talisman. At this moment, it seems terribly punitive, coming as the nation faces a virus that puts pregnant women at risk and is spread through sexual contact as well as by mosquitoes. Republicans must have known this controversial provision would provoke howls of protest from Democrats.
[…]As Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) noted, House Republicans were playing to a very narrow segment — the tea party wing of the GOP — with “a hyperpartisan proposal that doubles down on using women’s health as a political football.” The cost of this will probably be more wrangling. Are these the same Republicans who took control of Congress promising to break the partisan gridlock?