It didn’t take long for Democrats to try to pin the blame for the spreading Ebola crisis on Republican-imposed “budget cuts.” The effort clearly smacks of desperation. But it also happens to be completely false.
An ad sponsored by a group called the Agenda Project — titled “Republican Cuts Kill” — intersperses claims of falling budgets at the CDC and NIH, a montage of Republicans saying the word “cut,” and images of dead bodies and people in hazmat suits.
But it’s not just some fringe liberal group making this claim.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, says, “There’s no doubt that the deep health care cuts that we’ve seen have made it more difficult to respond in a rapid and comprehensive way to the Ebola outbreak.”
CDC head Thomas Frieden intimated as much, saying, “There are outbreaks happening today that we’re not able to recognize, stop or prevent as effectively as we should be able to.”
The head of the NIH, Francis Collins, even suggested that, were it not for budget cuts, “we probably would have had (an Ebola) vaccine in time for this.”
Just one problem. There haven’t been any real cuts to those budgets at all. At least not in the sense that any American household would recognize.
The CDC’s budget today is 25% bigger than it was in 2008 and 188% bigger than in 2000. The NIH budget has been flat for the past few years, but at a level that’s more than double what it was 14 years ago.
More at Investor’s
This reminds me of the debate many years ago when the two parties were talking about increasing the Social Security payments. The democrats were saying that the republicans wanted to “cut” the payments. What was really going on, was the republicans didn’t want to “increase” the amount as much as the democrats wanted to. Anytime republicans don’t want to increase something as much as the democrats want to, the democrats say the republicans want to “cut” the amount.
Over the years I have noticed that when a democrat introduces a bill, you can AUTOMATICALLY figure that it is the EXACT opposite of the title of the bill. One example: THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT. Like one person said, “It is not affordable, they don’t care, and it is an act.”
@Smorgasbord #1:
“…when a democrat introduces a bill, you can AUTOMATICALLY figure that it is the EXACT opposite of the title of the bill. One example: THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT. Like one person said, “It is not affordable, they don’t care, and it is an act.”
Well, they got one out of three, didn’t they?
More to the point, Ebola never reached line item significance. CDC/NIH radar never picked it up. That wasn’t a Democrat or a Republican over-sight. It just didn’t LOOK like it would ever become a significant problem. A few cases of Ebola popped up from time to time, but it never killed more than a handful of Africans that we knew of.
There HAS been a recent decrease of health funding. Over the past ten years, total expenditures have remained essentially flat, and when corrected for inflation, real spending has shrunk. But even with an additional ten or twenty % funding, it is unlikely that Ebola research would have received an extra dime. I imagine that Ebola research is having bales of cash thrown at it right about now. Hope it’s not too late.
@George+Wells: #2
I don’t know enough about the history of ebola to say much about it, so I don’t. People like to think that the government does what is best for it’s citizens, but we also have seen where political donations are more important to politicians than doing what is right.
I believe that obama wants to turn the USA into a muslim country, and he is using ebola as a reason to declare martial law later on. I also believe he is sending our soldiers over to get ebola, bring it back, and infect more of our military.
I never have seen obama defend the muslim religion as vigorously as he has since isis was formed. Normally, when he speaks, he sounds like a computer voice, with not tone change at all. Listen to him defend the muslim religion, and you will hear him get very emotional. I never have heard him get as emotional as he does when he defends the Muslim religion. Has anyone else heard obama get emotional about any other things? He does’t even get emotional when he is awarding the Medal of Honor to someone. His tone of voice NEVER changes.
#Smorgasbord #3:
Obama isn’t a great leader. He has made plenty of mistakes. But I he ISN’T stupid enough to intentionally bring Ebola here. The disease is more virulent than anyone originally thought, and if several thousand cases were to get loose here, with as mobile as we are, the disease would spread quickly and wipe us out. Anyone who doesn’t know that isn’t playing with a full deck.
What Obama says about Islam is irrelevant. He can’t sweet-talk them, and he can’t make them go away. The best we can hope for is that a coalition of Western powers will be able to keep them busy fighting on their OWN soil indefinitely. Doing that will eventually bankrupt us, but we’ll just print more money, and retirees and pensioners on fixed incomes will be the ones who ultimately foot the bill. The miracle of inflation.
@George+Wells: #4
As I have said many times: obama is a marionette, and can’t do ANYTHING without his puppeteers pulling his strings. He gets credit he doesn’t deserve. I’m just stating my opinion on obama and ebola, and I hope I am wrong. Others are free to disagree with me.
He doesn’t decide anything. The question is, is George Soros and the other liberals who pull obama’s strings using the ebola for THEIR advantage?
This would make it much easier for outsiders to take the country over.
Social Security payments are based on inflation, and rise as inflation does. This is why there hasn’t been an increase in payments for some time: The economy is moving backwards, and the inflation rate isn’t going up. With many items, they are actually going down in price, because people can’t afford new.
This is why I got such a great deal on my new pickup. People couldn’t afford the new 2012s, so they were buying used. The dealer still had 2011s on the lot. I chose one of them, and I got $3,000 more for my trade-in than book value for that reason, plus a rebate, plus a greatly reduced price so the dealer could sell a new vehicle that wasn’t selling.