House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi is joining the call for hearings on funding of public health agencies. On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce oversight committee held a hearing that essentially amounted to Republican political grandstanding over a proposed, and counter-productive travel ban, but so far no Republican in Congress is talking about how to pay for dealing with an outbreak. Pelosi calls them on that.
“While it is important that the House Homeland Security and Energy & Commerce committees have held hearings, it is not right that the Appropriations committee has not met in accordance with its responsibilities to fund these critical public health agencies,” she said.
Just as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle collaborated on a response to HIV/AIDS, Pelosi said “we must come together on a bipartisan basis” to address funding to agencies handling the Ebola response.
President Obama is considering requesting additional funding for the Ebola response, as well.
This is a prime opportunity for Democrats to talk about all of the cuts to the public health infrastructure and what the country needs to do to face any potential epidemic. As Jed pointed out, “every year between 3,000 and 49,000 times more people die of the flu in the U.S. than have died of Ebola in the U.S.” It just might be worth Congress taking some time to discuss whether the agencies charged with protecting our health have adequate resources to do that.
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Don’t expect the Appropriations Committee to rush back to D.C. to take that on, though. Because fomenting Ebola panic is much more important to Republicans than smart public policy. In fact, the likelier response we’ll see from House Appropriations will be inserting a travel ban into the must-pass continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown. Will they provide the funding for enforcing that ban? Don’t count on that, either.
