Dems cave to GOP on spending offsets to fight Zika

Congressional Democrats this week finally accepted a Republican plan to use $750 million in spending offsets to fund the nation's Zika fight, after months of objections and at the end of what Democrats warned as a summer that demanded an immediate response to the virus.

That agreement emerged Thursday as part of a bill to fund the government through Dec. 9.

But in those negotiations, Democrats are still refusing to drop their demand that health clinics in Puerto Rico associated with Planned Parenthood must be able to access the Zika funds. Conservative lawmakers continue to push for language preventing the funds from reaching these clinics because of their association with Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider.

Lawmakers are considering other tradeoffs in spending package talks, including a postponement of the Internet domain control handoff and the appointment of a critical board member to the Export-Import Bank.

Senate Republicans and Democrats Thursday exchanged offers for a deal that would provide both stopgap funding for the federal government as well as $1.1 billion for Zika, a mosquito-transmitted virus that causes birth defects. Senate Republicans had hoped to bring a bill to the floor this week, but the negotiations have stalled over the Planned Parenthood language.