Backers of avian flu plan hoping to ride on Defense bill

Leaders in both the House and Senate, mulling funding options to combat a potential avian flu pandemic and liability protections for vaccine makers, are eying the fiscal 2006 Defense appropriations bill as a favored vehicle to carry the $7.1 billion plan, aides and lobbyists said.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has passed a broad bioterrorism bill authored by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., that includes liability protections. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., is said to favor attaching the flu measures to the Defense bill, although other possibilities are designating the $7.1 billion as an emergency supplemental or adding it to the Labor-HHS spending bill. That spending bill still must be conferenced after the House rejected it.

Liability portions of Burr's bill could be attached to the Defense bill, sources say. Those provisions are designed to encourage drug companies to develop and manufacture vaccines by eliminating concerns that drug makers could face lawsuits stemming from injuries resulting from the vaccines.

But Democrats have said if drug makers are shielded from liabilities, the bill should have stronger assurances that victims harmed by vaccines would be compensated. A deal is possible, though. "We're still optimistic that it can be worked out," said a spokeswoman for Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

Some groups are taking a dim view of the liability protections. The protections Congress is poised to enact "would immunize the drug industry from liability for vaccine and other treatment injuries in the event of a flu pandemic outbreak," the Center for Justice and Democracy said in a statement, citing opposition from groups including the National Public Health Association and Consumers Union.

As the end of the session approaches, the Defense bill is being mentioned as a target to carry other legislation, too. Leaders are considering attaching the massive Labor-HHS spending bill to the Defense bill, if they do not send it back to conference or adopt a yearlong continuing resolution funding Labor-HHS programs.

"The idea is that you load it up with so much, then dare people to vote against it," one Senate aide said. "The bigger it is, the harder it gets" to say no, the aide added.