Senate to vote on Zika funding

The Senate will vote next week on a long-awaited funding package to bolster the national response to the Zika virus.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filed cloture Thursday on three Zika-related amendments to an appropriations bill that will come up for a vote next week.

{mosads}The funding will be tacked onto a package that combines the transportation and military construction appropriations bills.

Senators will be given three options for the funding, including the full $1.9 billion requested from President Obama. The other two options involve $1.1 billion in funding. One measure from Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) would fully offset that spending, while the other would not, according to a GOP aide.

That third option is the result of weeks of negotiations between Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who announced Thursday they had struck a deal on the funding. 

The scheduled votes mark a major step in Congress’s months-long struggle with Obama’s emergency funding request to address the Zika virus outbreak. Hundreds of cases of the disease have been reported in Puerto Rico, with several dozen in the continental U.S. as well. 

The deal comes about two weeks after Murray accused her Senate GOP counterparts of walking away from talks.