LuAnn Bennett Fails Fact Check Over False Zika Attacks
Mosquitoes have become an issue this summer, whether in backyard barbecues or the halls of Congress. In Virginia’s Tenth District, developer LuAnn Bennett’s most recent attack on her opponent Congresswoman Barbara Comstock referenced the Congressional response to the unfolding Zika Virus crisis.
Bennett’s attack is very direct, charging that Comstock, “played partisan politics and then left for a seven-week vacation before addressing this important issue.”
Straightforward claims like these are easy to fact check.
Did Comstock do nothing as Bennett suggested? The answer is no, and the record’s clarity leaves no room for interpretation.
Back in May, and prior to the August recess, Comstock joined House Republicans in voting in support of two bipartisan bills to address the Zika crisis.
As public frustration grew following confirmation of mosquito-borne Zika transmission in Florida, Bennett took to social media on July 29th, lambasting her opponent in a series of posts on Facebook and Twitter:
The claims in these posts are clearly at odds with the record.
Comstock Voted to Authorize $1.1 Billion in Anti-Zika Funding
On May 18th, 2016, Comstock voted in favor of the House’s Zika Response Appropriations Act (H.R. 5243), authorizing $1.1 billion in dedicated anti-Zika funding in a 241-184 vote.
Comstock’s ally, Speaker Paul Ryan, had made the expedited passage of this bill a top priority of the House GOP, despite efforts by some Democrats to obstruct the vote on anti-Zika appropriations by breaking chamber rules with a disruptive and partisan sit-in protesting in favor of new gun control laws.
The New York Times described the Democratic floor protest attempting to draw attention away from the Zika vote as, “pandemonium in the House chamber.”
The bill contained more accountability provisions than requested by the President, less funding for some line items, and a timetable requiring prompt application to anti-Zika efforts. In crafting a bill capable of swift passage, Speaker Ryan’s priority was immediately funding mosquito eradication, Zika research, and vaccine development.
Prior to the recess, Barbara Comstock supported and voted along with Republicans and Democrats to appropriate $1.1 billion in federal funds to fight Zika through the House’s Zika Response and Appropriations Act, which directly contradicts Bennett’s claim that Comstock, “played partisan politics and then left for a seven-week vacation before addressing this important issue.”
Comstock Also Supported the Zika Vector Control Act
In addition to voting to fund Zika control efforts, Comstock also voted in favor of the House’s Zika Vector Control Act (H.R. 897), which passed May 24th, 2016, in a bipartisan 258-156 vote.
This narrowly-crafted piece of legislation was written to streamline red tape currently obstructing insecticide-based mosquito eradication efforts, particularly in Puerto Rico, where the endemic presence of Zika-infected mosquitoes has left public health authorities desperately waiting for regulatory relief.
In 2009, a lawsuit against the EPA by environmental activists required the agency to implement a duplicitous permitting requirement which the agency’s own administrators felt was redundant and unnecessary. The scope of this decision was later expanded by the 2015 “Waters of the United States” rule.
The result has been a perfect storm of bureaucracy slowing down mosquito spraying operations, even where leaders from Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency argue in favor of mosquito eradication.
This bill offers relief for mosquito eradication efforts from unnecessary regulatory delays.
In a joint press release, CDC Director Tom Frieden and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy – both appointees of President Obama – both spoke in favor of accelerating mosquito eradication efforts through increased use of regulated insecticides.
“Multiple independent data sources indicate that at current trends thousands of pregnant women in Puerto Rico will catch Zika,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “The continental United States has been using aerial spraying for decades to reduce mosquito populations, and we urge the people of Puerto Rico to consider using the same proven and safe tactic.”
“Our recommendations for mosquito control in Puerto Rico are the same as our recommendations for mosquito control elsewhere in the United States—integrated pest management,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “We strongly encourage the people of Puerto Rico to consider aerial spraying as this approach is safe for people and a proven way of controlling the spread of mosquitoes that transmit diseases from Zika to dengue to chikungunya.”
This bill included an automatic sunset provision causing the provisions of the streamlined permitting process to expire on September 30th, 2018, as a means to build bipartisan support among moderate environmentalists who recognized the extraordinary threat and supported a rapid federal response.
Barbara Comstock supported and voted in favor of the Zika Vector Control Act, again contradicting Bennett’s claim that Comstock, “played partisan politics and then left for a seven-week vacation before addressing this important issue.”
Current Legislative Status
Congressional Zika response efforts remain stalled in the Senate. Although Senators from both parties each claim the other is at fault, House Republicans bear none of that responsibility, having swiftly sent the Senate a pair of bills to address the epidemic, both free of non-germane riders.
If Bennett’s frustration was indeed the Senate’s slowness in acting, she should have known better than to falsely take out that frustration on Comstock, who did everything she could in the House to respond to the Zika crisis before the August recess.
Conclusion: Bennett’s Claim is False
Regardless of how one allocates the blame in the Senate, three facts are abundantly clear:
1. On May 18th, Comstock voted for the House bill allocating federal funds to fight Zika through vaccine development, mosquito control, and public awareness efforts, over the objections of some Democrats attempting to disrupt the vote.
2. On May 24th, Comstock again voted for legislation addressing the Zika crisis, on this occasion supporting a bill to reduce bureaucracy obstructing mosquito control efforts.
3. Bennett subsequently accused Comstock, in plain and direct terms, of doing nothing before leaving on a seven-week recess.
The straightforward claims made by Bennett against her opponent and House Republicans leaves no wiggle room in Bennett’s statement. Her claim is simply false.
This isn’t the first occasion on which Bennett has launched false and negative attacks against Comstock. Readers may remember when Bennett attacked Comstock with false and misleading statistics with which fact checkers at both Politifact and the Washington Post had previously taken exception.
Bennett’s campaign is also in the process of damage control since it was reported that LuAnn Bennett scrubbed a phony charity from her campaign biography – one which she claimed leadership of, despite it having shut down three years earlier without ever having filed any documentation of providing program services to anyone in need.
