Choosing Planned Parenthood Over Zika

When Democrats blocked a vote Tuesday on funding efforts to fight the Zika virus, they chose protecting Planned Parenthood over the prospect of babies born with grisly birth defects.

That is the only reasonable conclusion from the 52-48 largely party-line vote in the Senate to block the $1.1 billion spending measure. Only one Democrat, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, voted with most Republicans to shut off debate, far from the 60 needed.

“This is a real public health emergency; not an opportunity to score political points.”

Democrats raised a laundry list of objections, ranging from a provision to allow Confederate flags on Department of Veterans Affair property to a measure allowing pesticide spraying near water sources. But Planned Parenthood appears to have been the sacred cow Democrats could not slaughter. The nation’s largest abortion provider urged Democrats to kill the Zika funding because it was partially paid for by reducing funding for birth control providers.

Dana Singiser, vice president of public policy and government affairs for Planned Parenthood Federation, called the measure a “political stunt” and said it would hurt women and children.

“We need a real response that empowers women and stops the Zika virus from inflicting suffering on families in America and across the globe,” she said in a statement.

Planned Parenthood barked the order, and the Democrats marched.

Sen. Roy Blunt called the Democrats’ move “reprehensible” and said it would have real-world health consequences.

“This is a real public health emergency; not an opportunity to score political points,” he said in a statement.

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The United States as of last week had 2,680 Zika cases, including 481 pregnant women, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control. This week, a Haitian woman who traveled to the United States gave birth in Florida to a child afflicted with a rare neurological condition tied to Zika called microcephaly.

There so far have been no reports of anyone contracting the disease in any of the states, but with two mosquito species thought to carry the virus present in a wide swath of the country, health experts say it is only a matter of time.

The $1.1 billion package shot down Tuesday was a compromise between the Senate and the House, which originally passed a $622 million plan that fully offset the new spending with cuts elsewhere. Both houses balked at President Obama’s $1.9 billion request.

Congressional Democrats complained that the compromise version, though it relied partly on borrowed money, cut programs they consider sacrosanct. They pointed to $543 million shaved from a fund under the Affordable Care Act to help U.S. territories set up health care exchanges and $107 million leftover from an emergency fund to combat Ebola.

[lz_table title=”Zika Funding Killed” source=”House Appropriations Committee”]Where funds would have gone
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CDC: $476 million for mosquito-control efforts
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NIH: $230 million for vaccine research
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Global Health Programs: $145.5 million
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Grants to outbreak areas: $95 million
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Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority: $85 million to develop Zika tests
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Community Health Centers: $40 million
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Operations costs: $29.5 million
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National Health Service Corps: $6 million
[/lz_table]

Ironically, much of those supposed cuts are nothing more than accounting gimmicks. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined that only 17 percent of the $750 million in cuts came from budgeted funds that would otherwise have been spent.

“They’re claiming a savings on money that wouldn’t have been spent,” said Justin Bogie, a senior policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation. “Only $127 million out of the $750 million are actually legitimate cuts.”

Bogie said it is a common accounting practice that makes new spending look more fiscally responsible than it actually is. Called a “recision,” the budgetary maneuver adjusts the budget in one part of government to pay for increased spending in another part. But if the budgeted funds were not going to be spent, the effect is to increase overall spending — and, thus, the deficit.

“Sometimes, it’s legitimate — but a lot of times, it’s not legitimate,” Bogie said.

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For instance, a $100 million reduction in spending on administration of the Department of Health and Human Services is a genuine cut, Bogie said. But the Congressional Budget Office determined that only $27 million of the $107 million cut to the international Ebola program would have been spent. The same goes for the $543 million Obamacare cut.

Concern over the increased red ink led Republican Sens. Mike Lee and James Lankford to vote against the bill.

“Last month, I introduced a plan that would have provided the necessary funding to address the Zika virus without growing our national debt,” Lankford said in a prepared statement. “Today’s vote on the negotiated bill between the House and the Senate still agrees to $350 million in new federal debt spending and exceeds the previously agreed-upon budget caps. I’m disappointed that between the two chambers, we are still unable to fund our nation’s response to this Zika responsibly.”