WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Tuesday called on Congressional leaders to stop playing politics with the Zika emergency and immediately pass the bipartisan compromise bill that passed the Senate last month. Murphy, a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations and the conference committee negotiating the Zika virus supplemental funding bill, voted against invoking cloture on the conference report that needlessly and recklessly cut funding for Planned Parenthood and the Affordable Care Act. On May 17, Murphy voted for a bipartisan compromise that provided $1.1 billion to respond to the public health emergency presented by Zika. The compromise, which Republican leaders have since abandoned, passed the Senate by a vote of 68-30 on May 19.
“It’s days like today that make me sick with Washington,” said Murphy. “Zika is already spreading in the U.S., but partisans here in DC can’t put the games on hold for even one second. Republican leaders had a compromise in-hand with overwhelming bipartisan support – one that had already passed the Senate with nearly 70 votes – but they threw it in the trash so they could have the same old fights over Planned Parenthood and the Affordable Care Act.”
“As I’ve been saying for months, Congress needs to immediately pass a clean, bipartisan bill to give doctors and scientists the resources they need to stop Zika. If Congress fails to act before it leaves town for the summer, we will bear the blame for Zika’s devastation because we turned down every chance we had to stop it,” Murphy added.
Murphy has supported numerous initiatives to combat the outbreak of Zika in Connecticut and across the United States, and has continuously called for $1.9 billion of emergency funding to address the outbreak. A bill cosponsored by Murphy – called the Adding Zika Virus to the FDA Priority Review Voucher Program Act – was recently signed into law. It adds Zika as an eligible disease to receive a priority review voucher from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), incentivizing the development of Zika vaccines.
Forty-five states, the District of Columbia, and several U.S. territories have reported travel-related cases of Zika. There have been no locally acquired reported cases in the continental United States. The Connecticut Department of Public Health has confirmed that nineteen Connecticut residents have tested positive for travel-related cases of Zika. For further information regarding the Zika virus, visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.
