Ebola Should Be Off Limits

shop times; font-size: 12pt;”>By Gregory Welborn

The Ebola virus is serious enough and deadly enough that I would have thought it off limits to even the lowest politician’s cynical efforts to get elected. Certainly it was a topic which I was going to avoid as a topic of political commentary. As Senator Vandenberg once said, “there are times when politics must be put aside and the country united in effort toward a common cause.”  It appears Liberals do not recognize those limits and will stop at nothing to try to retain control of the Senate, and so they have dipped below the bottom of that barrel of political slime to accuse Republicans of bringing this Ebola plague to our shores. As much as I would like to avoid it, truth must be spoken to this lie and shame cast upon those who would seek partisan advantage when national unity is required.

One of the most contested Senate races pits Arkansas’ incumbent Democrat, Mark Pryor, against Republican challenger, Tom Cotton. It is in such races where the rubber meets the road, where the national Democrats are choosing to place their ad money and craft their message – an outrageous message they hope will turn the race. This is where the Democrats ran an ad blaming Republicans for Ebola’s appearance on our shores.

The Pryor-for-Senate ad says: “Tom Cotton voted against preparing America for pandemics like Ebola. Congressman Cotton voted to cut billions from our nation’s medical disaster and emergency programs.” When called on it, all Democrats can offer is that votes against the stimulus, or votes for the sequester, represented votes against the Centers for Disease Control (the CDC). But to make this argument, Democrats have to rely once again on that old accounting gimmick of classifying a vote against a planned increase as a vote to decrease funding. In the temporal world, such a mathematical argument proves only that someone is desperately in need of remedial education in math. In the moral world it proves someone lacks a functioning moral compass.

Pryor interview on CNN — Weasel Zippers

The budget of the United States has been so inflated under President Obama that $500 billion deficits under George Bush have grown to multiple $1 trillion deficits. There is no economist (liberal or conservative) that will tell you these deficits are sustainable. Voting to reduce these deficits to – dare I say – more manageable levels was, and is, a highly moral act; to place multiple trillion dollar burdens on our kids and grandkids is indefensible practically or morally.

With specific regard to the CDC, the agency’s budget (including its subsidiary, the Toxic Substances and Disease Registry) was $10.7 billion in 2014 and averaged $10.8 billion during all of the Obama years. The agency’s budget during the last years of Bush’s presidency was $8.7 billion. How’s that a decrease exactly?

As a secondary, but no less important issue, Congressmen and Senators – not to mention the taxpayers – have every right to ask how an agency’s budget is being spent. Nobody is required to write blank checks, and holding federal agencies to some standard of financial accountability is very much the job of Congress and every member thereof. So how is the money being spent?

The CDC’s budget is supplemented by access to additional funding from the Public Health Fund, of which an additional $2 billion a year is available without strings. Any perceived deficit in funding for critical tasks (like Ebola programs) could have been drawn down by the CDC’s management. Instead, the Public Health Fund has given money to lobbying firms in D.C., and “invested” in dance fitness, massage therapy, pet neutering, urban gardening, and a variety of other purportedly health-enhancing programs according to The Wall Street Journal. If this administration, and the Liberals in the Senate seeking to keep their jobs and perks, were so concerned with funding the CDC’s critical tasks, why didn’t they exercise the necessary oversight to make sure taxpayer money was used appropriately for those tasks?

Beyond budgetary lies, Americans also have every right to ask what steps this administration has actually taken to prevent Ebola in the U.S. That’s not a question the Obama team really wants to answer. For at least two weeks that I can document there have been calls to restrict flights from the West Africa Ebola hot zone to the U.S. There have been additional calls for the administration to direct the CDC to develop a set of standard procedures for first responders and local hospitals to follow when/if presented with a potential Ebola patient.

There are 6,000 people per week who come from the hot zone into the United States. Seems like a high number, but it simply reflects the incredible amount of investment which is being made in Africa right now – $48 billion worth by some credible economic estimates, which of course represents a significant number of people with a vested interest in keeping open those travel lanes. As of this writing, we still do not have travel bans or restrictions.

The administration would tell us that “procedures” are being put in place, but we also have a right to question the efficacy of those procedures. Something as simple as making a call to a couple of hospitals, or police or fire departments, will tell you that there are still no policies emanating from D.C. or the CDC in Atlanta. CNN’s Jake Tapper reported the other day talking with a specialist in infectious diseases who said that fire and police personnel still don’t know what to do with somebody who has Ebola-like symptoms. They don’t know what to do with their vehicle, or to their house or apartment. Hospitals don’t have standard procedures to deal with the potentiality either. The painful truth is there are no recognized standard procedures in place.

It bears repeating, as I opened this article, that Ebola is serious enough and deadly enough that politics should be put aside. This is not another “crisis which shouldn’t be wasted”. We should unite as a country to prevent Ebola, and to fight it where we can’t prevent it. This is not the time for any politician to use the crisis to scare voters into casting a ballot one way or the other. In fact, to do so should be enough to disqualify that politician from ever holding any elected office again. So shame on you, Mark Pryor, for running that vile ad, and shame on you, Senate Democrats, for funding it.

Gregory J. Welborn is a freelance writer and has spoken to several civic and religious organizations on cultural and moral issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and 3 children and is active in the community. He can be reached [email protected]/5l.com

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