Today on the Hill: Cloture on Zika Amendments in the Senate; House to Begin NDAA Marathon

Cloture votes on three Zika-related amendments are due in the Senate today as lawmakers decide on the amount of funding to be allocated towards fighting the virus and whether there will be a budgetary offset to pay for the package. Democrats favor funding President Obama’s full $1.9 billion request without any coinciding cuts or offsets (S. Amdt. 3898), while Republicans prefer a $1.1 billion package (S. Amdt. 3899) that would be paid for by raiding money set aside for a preventative-health fund set up by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The third amendment is a bipartisan compromise (S. Amdt. 3900) that would provide $1.1 billion without the ACA offset. 

The amendments are being submitted to the combined Transportation-HUD and Military Construction-VA appropriations measure, which includes spending figures in line with the $1.07 trillion discretionary spending cap set by last year’s Budget Control Act. White House officials have offered support to the bill for that reason, but also warned that the President would veto the legislation if it includes any “problematic ideological provisions.” While the bill advanced out of the Senate Appropriations Committee without any controversial policy riders, an amendment being considered by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) that would block the administration from going forward with a fair housing rulemaking and language that would suspend a rule limiting truckers to 70 hours driving each week could complicate the process.

In the House, the Rules Committee will set the terms of debate for the lower chamber’s Zika funding measure (H.R. 5243), which includes $622 million in funding that would be paid for by using unspent money dedicated to containing last year’s Ebola breakout. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has called that approach “woefully inadequate,” and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended against redirecting the Ebola fund as cleanup efforts continue in West Africa.

On the House floor today, lawmakers are set to begin a marathon debate on the $610.5 billion defense authorization bill (H.R. 4909) known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The Rules Committee sifted through the first 61 of nearly 400 amendments that have been submitted for the bill, including provisions to allow undocumented immigrants to join the U.S. military and another that would require the president to report on the use of commercial aircraft by Iran for illicit military activities. The White House has already listed nearly five-dozen objections to the bill in its veto threat, the most prominent problem being the use of $18 billion in war funds to pay for certain Pentagon weapons programs.

‘Today on the Hill’ includes updates provided by the House and Senate majority leaders, as well information derived from publications including Bloomberg Government, The Hill, Morning Consult, Kaiser Health News, Modern Healthcare, Inside Health Policy, and others.