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Progress on Flint, Zika Negotiations May Avert Government Shutdown (Updated)

Neither the U.S. House of Representatives nor the U.S. Senate have finalized the items on the legislative agenda. But if all goes as planned, lawmakers will leave Washington, D.C., by the end of the week and won’t return until at least November—potentially later.

Though the Republican leaders remained steadfast in their opposition to Flint in the CR, Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) teamed up to advance federal aid as part of their chamber’s version of WRDA. Win McNamee/Getty Images

UPDATE, September 29, 9:48 a.m.: The House on Wednesday evening first agreed to an amendment authorizing $170 million in federal aid for Flint, then passed Water Resources Development Act (H.R. 5303), setting the stage for a bicameral conference committee to negotiate differences between the underlying bills and the specifics of Flint funding. Shortly before 10 p.m., the House voted 342-85 to pass the Senate’s continuing resolution, averting a government shutdown and providing $1.1 billion in funding to combat the Zika virus without contraception restrictions that had stalled the deal. The House then recessed through at least Election Day, and the Senate is expected to follow suit.

Congressional lawmakers racing to keep the government running past Friday and recess through the presidential election appear to have agreed on three holdups: a stopgap budget measure, a funding package to combat the Zika virus, and a path forward to mitigate the Flint, Michigan, water crisis.

Neither the U.S. House of Representatives nor the U.S. Senate have finalized the items on the legislative agenda. But if all goes as planned, lawmakers will leave Washington, D.C., by the end of the week and won’t return until at least November—potentially later.

The continuing resolution (CR) would fund the government through December 9 and include $1.1 billion in Zika aid. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) previously pledged to address Zika in the CR while Republicans worked to resolve a fight over Planned Parenthood—shorthand for contraception restrictions that would prevent outside groups, including Profamilias, the Puerto Rico partner of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, from providing such services to help contain the spread of a virus that can be sexually transmitted.

McConnell indicated that he was open to dropping the restrictions in order to avoid a government shutdown.

The latest version of the CR would route $75 million in health funding through the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to state, territory, and tribal health departments, empowering them to reimburse providers for Zika-related care. The agreement guarantees at least $60 million of that funding for “territories with the highest rates of Zika transmission.” As of September 21, Puerto Rico accounts for 19,395 of the 19,706 locally acquired cases of Zika, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Republicans’ Zika plan initially restricted patients to obtaining care—that is, contraception—from the limited number of public health departments, hospitals, and Medicaid Managed Care clinics in Puerto Rico, according to a Democratic summary Rewire obtained in June. The plan also prohibited subgrants to Profamilias and other outside groups “that could provide important services to hard-to-reach populations, especially hard-to-reach populations of women that want to access contraceptive services.”

Still, Senate Democrats blocked the agreement from advancing Tuesday after McConnell directed disaster relief assistance toward recent Louisiana flooding but not Flint, two years after Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) administration switched the city’s water source from Lake Huron to the corrosive Flint River. Some 100,000 residents of the predominantly Black city are still being forced to drink, cook with, and bathe their children in bottled water.

Democrats pressured McConnell to add the $100 million that the Senate passed for Flint earlier this month to the must-pass CR. Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and James Inhofe (R-OK), the lead negotiators on Flint, secured the funding to help replace Flint’s corroded lead pipes, along with additional provisions to assist the city and other communities that face drinking water hazards, in the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) (S. 2848), an overwhelmingly bipartisan reauthorization of the nation’s water infrastructure projects.

McConnell and Inhofe maintained that the Flint funding should proceed as part of WRDA.

Stabenow argued otherwise.

“I’m happy to support Louisiana. We have said that from the very beginning,” Stabenow told reporters during a press conference Tuesday before Democrats blocked the CR. “We just ask that the Republicans in the House and the Senate understand about lead poisoning and water, shutting down an entire city’s water system of 100,000 people who have waited too long.”

That same day, Stabenow and other Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Harry Reid (NV), urged Republican leaders to reconsider their decision.

“The CR is the only must-pass legislation remaining on the Congressional calendar, and Democrats have been clear that Congress should not leave Flint and other lead-tainted communities out of any CR negotiation that includes emergency disaster funding,” they wrote in a letter to McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Though the Republican leaders remained steadfast in their opposition to Flint in the CR, Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) teamed up to advance federal aid as part of their chamber’s version of WRDA (H.R. 5303).

The bipartisan agreement came together late Tuesday, a day after the House Rules Committee, the arbiter of which amendments may proceed to the floor, rejected consideration of Rep. Dan Kildee’s (D-MI) $220 million amendment for Flint. A Pelosi aide confirmed the negotiations paved the way for an updated $170 million amendment, offered by Kildee and fellow Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar (R), “that will, at the end of the day, provide the necessary funding Flint needs in the final WRDA conference report.”

A final WRDA bill for the president’s signature will necessitate the work of a conference committee to reconcile policy differences, including over the specifics of Flint funding.

Though Stabenow commended the deal, her position on the CR “remains the same.”

“I will vote no on any CR that does not treat communities equally,” she said in a statement Wednesday. “It is wrong to ask families in Flint to wait at the back of the line again.”