Tim Kaine Is Annoyed by Republicans

U.S. Senator Tim Kaine is annoyed with Republican colleagues' efforts to "politicize" (and slow down) funding for efforts to fight the Zika virus. This web site must ask how, exactly, money is going to combat the virus, anyway. More window screens, mosquito netting, repellents? (Good.) More treatments that actually help infected patients, if any treatments (including access to better food) do help them? (Good.) More obsolete poisons that will cause a mosquito population later on? (Bad.) More funding for a study that may or may not be relevant? (Meh...) And although this web site guesses that efforts to "limit access to women's health care clinics" has something to do with withholding funds from sites that offer or recommend abortion, how on Earth did that ever get mixed in with anything related to a mosquito-borne infection?

This web site has some Republican correspondents, whom we believe to be people of good will, who say things like "If DDT kills the mosquitoes, what are we waiting for? Drench the towns in DDT..." Dr. Tom Dooley was a man of sincere good will, and he drenched lots of disease-carrying pests and parasites in DDT, and does any of these Republicans want to replicate what his good intentions did for Dr. Dooley? Controlling insects has to rely on measures more sustainable than poison. This web site does not back Senator Kaine against Republicans every day; today it does.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Tim Kaine released the following statement today after voting against a partisan Republican funding measure that would insufficiently address the spread of the Zika virus: 

“We don’t have any time to waste in addressing the spread of the Zika virus, but that’s exactly what Republicans in the House and Senate have chosen to do with this appropriations package. Rather than focusing on the serious threat Zika poses to families across our country by advancing the bipartisan funding compromise agreed to in the Senate last month, Republicans attached partisan policy ‘riders’ that would limit access to women’s health care clinics – many of which are leading the effort to stem the epidemic - as well as weaken the laws that govern clean water and the safety of pesticides for public health. I urge my Republican colleagues to abandon this partisan distraction and immediately engage in a new round of talks on funding to combat the Zika virus.” 

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