Repubs Cut Pandemic Preparedness Funding

so the gop is against volcano monitoring and pandemic preparedness funding, what's next hurricane and earthquake research funding?

 

$900MM dollars is a lot of money.

 

To be fair [and balanced] the argument wasn't against the idea that pandemic preparedness funding was important, but rather that this was a stimulus bill meant to kickstart the economy. It was not supposed to be a reform bill.

Their argument was "hey, we are passing this bill full of all this spending to help the economy, why are we giving the money to entities that are financially fine and calling it stimulus?"

I guess in their mind it would be like saying you were going to help struggling store chains and then give money to Wal-Mart.

 

And this underscores the silliness of the underlyling argument - to the Republicans, all spending (especially when it comes to disaster preparedness) is/was automatically categorized as "wasteful" regardless of its merits, when in hindsight it would have been a great investment, so accordingly they merely attack the potential stimulus ramifications. This is why their rejectionism is such an epic fail - there is nothing wrong with the government spending money to prevent pandemics or shore up levees or highway bridges.

 

If the American economy were to be afflicted with the conditions of a pandemic, for even just one week...the losses would be in the billions.

 

does that mean they really needed $900MM, that's damn near one seventh of the stimulus package. what is pandemic prepration when the CDC is separately requesting $462MM.

 

I don't think more money is the right thing to do for the reason pgabs just said and because the huge clusterbleep that homeland security has turned our emergency agencies into. We need faster reacting emergency agencies. Making them bigger just hurts that effort.

Hopefully with the hurricanes and this we will learn that an umbrella agency does not work for certain situations.

 

probably portable treatment facilities and infatructure to get them deployed asap.

 

This isn't a defense of rove or the republicans on this issue, but personally I would have questioned that amount of money also in the stimulus package. and secondly, they are doing the same thing rove is being blamed for, politicizing this issue.

lastly, its not like the stimulus bill was passed a year or two ago, I doubt if the money was approved, it would make a difference on what is happening right now? what would have been done in these two months.

The article should at least provide some detail on what that $900MM would have gone to.

 

The whole reason it was put in was because at time like now, we are more vulnerable to such a thing and we needed to make sure we were ready immediately. By putting it in the stimulus, the money comes in right away. Waiting to put it in the budget means we have to wait until the budget is passed and made official.

The way I see it is that the people who put it in the stimulus have foresight while the Republicans arguing against it were purely motivated by politics.

 

Just to clarify, $900MM was 0.1% of the stimulus package, not 1/7th (14%). Otherwise, I tend to agree that you could make an argument that this makes more sense as a regular budget item as opposed to a stimulus package. While it does create jobs, stimulus is more stuff that has a stronger multiplicative effect, and this doesn't strike me as the type of spending that fits that.

 

With a teetering economy, we're more vulnerable to everything. Terrorism, rioting, a meteor hitting the Earth, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. Should we have put spending in for all those types of things? A deadly, pandemic flu is a disaster in a good economy or a bad one. I think connecting it to "it's worse in a bad economy" is a stretch, at best.

 

is Rove a member of congress? who controls congress?

 

I agree with Pgabs and Fmullegun on this that its a mistake to retroactively go and criticize the Susan Collins and other Congressional Repubs on this.

A pandemic is certainly in the realm of possibility but at the same time so are many other things that money could be spent on. We can't spend money on everything and I don't fault them for questioning that sort of spending.

I also think criticism like this strikes me as politicizing the issue in the here and now when I don't think now is the time to be pointing fingers.

 

Not quite. In a time like this, people getting sick who don't have health insurance might not go to a doctor right away. This allows them to spread the virus around and making it harder to contain.

You can't prevent or slow down an earthquake, a hurricane, or a meteor.

 

But the majority of the transmission of a virus occurs before people are really symptomatic anyway. Once you have symptoms and go to the doctor, you've probably already spread it. How exactly was $900MM in CDC spending going to help contain a pandemic flu?

 

stupid math, sorry.

 

Is the straw man made of straw? Who built the straw man?

 

i'll finger point.

sibelius isn't confirmed because of republican shenanigans. we don't have a head of HHS right now.