Inaction on Zika funding likely to delay vaccine testing

The warning came in a letter from White House budget chief Shaun Donovan and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and says that failure by Congress to pass anti-Zika funds before exiting Washington for its extended summer recess would "significantly impede the administration's ability to prepare for and respond" to the Zika threat this summer and beyond.

A Senate Democratic aide said Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Monday night broached a compromise with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to separate the Zika issue from a veterans funding bill, strip away the Planned Parenthood-related provision and dump a provision that would ease rules on pesticide spraying.

McConnell, however, dismissed the offer, refusing to disavow the House GOP position on denying new money to Planned Parenthood and saying it is too late and too cumbersome to try to advance a new compromise measure in the days remaining before the recess.

The GOP measure doesn't explicitly mention Planned Parenthood — which is loathed by anti-abortion Republicans — but makes sure the organization's Puerto Rico affiliates are ineligible for funding to provide contraception and Zika-related health care.

Among the other consequences of the impasse on Zika, the administration says, is a slowdown in government-funded research to develop a fuller understanding of Zika's effects on pregnant women and their unborn children.