Congress is back at work this week after taking most of the summer off. House and Senate leaders say with only this month planned for session, they will not complete action on the dozen funding bills that make up the federal budget. That could set off a mad scramble to fund a few new high-priority programs.
It’s a given that Congress will have to pass a continuing resolution sometime this month to keep the federal government operating. But new spending can’t be included, and that means money will have to be found to pay for combating the spread of the Zika virus and to address the nation’s drug abuse crisis.
Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, says funding for both initiatives should be approved.
“It is inexcusable that the Congress adjourned without passing the Zika funding, every day we learn of a few new cases,” she says.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine’s 1st District, who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, also believes that Zika funding is critical.
“We’re seeing more and more of it in Florida, it’s spreading. I think it has people very nervous. The administration has some funding they could tap into and I understand that they have,” she says.
Pingree says a Zika funding vote was blocked because the House added an amendment that unfunded Family Planning. U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent, says the House HAS a habit of tacking on unrelated issues to legislation, which has blocked progress on funding a lot of problems, including Zika.
“And that’s what killed it. It would have passed in five minutes,” he says. “And we are now back and messing around with that. I have been agitating during this recess that we should go back and do a Zika bill in one day.”
Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin of Maine’s 2nd District declined to be interviewed for this story, but has voted for Zika funding in the past. He also declined comment on funding for the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA, which he supported.
CARA authorizes several new programs to address the drug crisis but provided no new dollars. King says CARA should have been funded when it was passed.
“Everybody said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll fund it in Appropriations and that will be in the late summer or early fall,’ and now that is going to be put on hold. In the meantime, we are headed towards another record loss of life here in Maine from drug overdoses,” he says.
Pingree says CARA should have been funded when the bill was passed, but House Republicans again wanted to attach unrelated amendments to the legislation that the Senate would not even consider.
“There is one thing that states like Maine need: it’s funding,” she says. “It’s funding to assist people in need, to fund treatment, law enforcement, and I’m not sure why my Republican colleagues have been so unwilling to put funding behind this.”
Collins says while there was some money in existing accounts for both CARA and the Zika outbreak, there is a clear need for additional emergency funding for both, a need that could be met with standalone bills free of extraneous amendments
“Put aside unrelated issues and focus on the crisis at hand,” she says.
Collins says she hopes that’s what Congress will do, but points out that the entire House, and a third of the Senate, are up for election in November. She says many of those members seem to be more concerned with their election campaigns than with passing a budget by Oct. 1.
That could mean tough budget decisions are delayed until after the election, or to the first of the year as some in the House are advocating.
