title:  WATCH This GOP Rep. Angrily Offer A Gift To His Fellow Republicans For Rejecting Zika Funding
text: The only time Republicans want to actually help people is when it will help them, too. Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) is well aware of this, and being from Florida, he s understandably angry about the House s refusal to pass funding to combat Zika. So he decided to try and make his obstructive, intransigent colleagues understand the crisis   by threatening to release 100 mosquitoes from Florida onto the House floor.He also berated them for their utter selfishness: I brought these mosquitoes today to convey that fear and that anxiety of millions of Americans, of Floridians. Can you imagine the fear and anxiety in this chamber if these mosquitoes were outside this jar, not inside this jar.Members of Congress would run down the hall to the physician s office to be tested. They would spray themselves before coming down here. This is the fear of Floridians! Right here! The House is interested in defunding Planned Parenthood to the point where they stick that legislation in everything, hoping that putting it in an otherwise must-pass bill will lead to getting rid of the organization altogether. They do this even when doing so is totally irrelevant, and actually damaging, to the very real problems Americans face.Like Zika, in Florida. Watch him go at the rest of the House below:Democrats actually blocked the bill, but they did so because of provisions on Planned Parenthood, the fact that it would rob the ACA of needed funding, and the fact that it was nearly $1 billion less than the Obama administration had requested. Furthermore, the Senate passed a bi-partisan Zika bill of its own that the House wouldn t vote on. Republicans love to play this game so they can blame Democrats for obstruction.The truth is, if they d just pass a clean bill like grown-ups, then we d have a lot more governing and a lot less of this.In fact, Paul Ryan said that when it came time for House and Senate negotiators to act, it was Democrats who refused. He left out one teensy, tiny little detail when he blasted them about it   the fact that Republican negotiators insisted the bill must carry a provision blocking funding for a Planned Parenthood affiliate in Puerto Rico.Since January, Zika has spread to 13 states, likely exists in far more, and is at crisis levels in Florida. 84 pregnant women have been diagnosed with the virus, and there are probably hundreds more who are currently undiagnosed. As of just a few days ago, there were 614 known cases total in Florida. There were 210 known cases in California.With this, one would hope that Republicans could put their politics aside and pass a clean bill to address the crisis, and then go back to playing politics if they must. Vice President Biden actually went straight to Congress to ask them to stop playing games. From Reuters: Give us an up-or-down vote, straight, on Zika,  Biden said at an event on Capitol Hill with fellow Democrats from the Senate and House of Representatives. I understand attaching controversial issues to important legislation   but this is a national emergency,  Biden added.  People s health, the well-being of unborn children, the health of the country at large, is at stake. Act. Republicans don t care, so Jolly decided to try and force them to care by threatening them with Zika to see how they d react. He decided to try and instill the fear that his state feels over the virus. It s unclear if the gambit worked, though. If it doesn t, then the situation is just more proof that the GOP isn t actually pro-life (because if they were, this would have been a done deal long ago), and also that they couldn t give two craps about helping anybody.Featured image via screen capture from embedded video