President Obama Blasts Congress Over Zika Funding
Source: Time
President Obama Blasts Congress Over Zika Funding
Maya Rhodan @m_rhodan
1:24 PM ET
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BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI—AFP/Getty Images (L-R) Amy Pope, Deputy Homeland Security Advisor, US Vice President Joe R. Biden, US President Barack Obama, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Tom Frieden wait after a meeting about the Zika virus in the Oval Office of the White House BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI—AFP/Getty Images
"All of this work costs money"
President Obama blasted Congress for failing to provide more funding to combat the Zika virus, telling members to send a bill to his desk that has sufficient funds to fight disease.
“Congress needs to get me a bill. It needs to get me a bill that has sufficient funds to do the job,” President Obama said Friday, shortly after the CDC reported that 279 pregnant women in the U.S. and its territories have contracted the virus. “To the extent that we’re not handling this thing on the front end, we’re going to have bigger problems on the back end.”
Obama previously requested $1.9 billion to fight the virus earlier this year, when scientists first began to make the link between the virus and microcephaly, an abnormally small head in babies. Zika funding bills passed both the House and the Senate this week, though neither met the President’s desired level of funding. A Republican-backed bill in the House that allocated $622 million will have to be reconciled with a compromise measure that passed the Senate this week, which provided $1.1 billion to combat Zika.....................
Read more: http://time.com/4343317/president-obama-zika-funding-congress-us/
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