Under Speaker Paul Ryan's leadership, the U.S. House of Representatives has repeatedly refused to fund the government's Zika response effort. The reason for the refusal is Speaker Ryan's desire to use Zika funding as a bargaining chip to win political concessions on unrelated issues. Speaker Ryan believes he should be rewarded with a political horse-trade simply for doing his job. As a direct result of his dereliction of duty, the virus has now spread to 48 states, and continues to grow at an exponential rate, with over 1,000 pregnant women infected with the virus.
To honor the man responsible for the Zika virus' explosive growth in the United States, we the people propose that Zika fever and associated diseases be renamed "Paul Ryan's Disease."