Today, House Appropriations Committee released the House Republicans’ $622 million supplemental appropriations bill to fight Zika. The supplemental is expected to be considered by the House this week.
The bill is fully offset, according to a statement released by the Committee. It uses $352 million in “unobligated” money that was appropriated to address the Ebola outbreak in 2014 and $270 million in “unused administrative funding” from the Health and Human Services Department. Funds would be allocated for FY 2016, which means they could be used during the next five months. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) previously announced that the Committee intends to include Zika funding in the FY 2017 Labor-H bill.
The proposal is likely to be derided by Democratic Members and the Administration, which have repeatedly called for $1.9 billion in emergency funding without offsets to research and combat the mosquito-borne virus.