Agency Leading Ebola Response Has Had Budget Cut Nearly $600 Million Since 2010

[MineralMan]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/01/ebola-cdc-budget_n_5913844.html

WASHINGTON -- The lead agency tasked with responding to the threat of Ebola both within the United States and abroad has seen its budget drop dramatically in the past four years.

In breaking the news on Tuesday that the first Ebola patient had been diagnosed in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assured Americans that it had adequate resources to combat the virus. The public health care system in America is dramatically more advanced than those in West Africa, currently the site of the largest Ebola outbreak in history. And as far as pathogens go, Ebola's ability to spread is limited. It can only be transferred through the exchange of bodily fluids.

But CDC officials and lawmakers who support the agency warn that years of austerity has hobbled both the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, both in terms of their ability to combat future outbreaks and their ability to prevent them from happening in the first place.

According to numbers provided by a Senate Budget Committee staffer, the CDC has actually recovered nicely from the sequestration cuts that went into effect a year ago. The agency has been allocated $5.882 billion in fiscal year 2014, compared to the $5.432 billion it received after the cuts took place.

More at link...

Sequestration and other budget cuts have materially affected the CDC's ability to cope with emergent situations. This Ebola outbreak is just an example of that. There are consequences to every cut to every budget. We're reaping the harvest right now.

GOTV 2014 and Beyond!

[magical thyme]

1. same with WHO. they emerged from 2008 with massive debt and funding was

subsequently slashed and burned. Particularly in the area of infectious disease control.

[MineralMan]

2. Yes. We cut budgets and then scream bloody murder when

those cuts lead to problems later. I remember a time when CDC teams wearing hazmat suits would have been dispatched to Texas to deal with infectious waste. Instead, we have private cleaning company with pressure washers flushing the stuff down the storm sewer. Odds are that strategy will work just fine, but I would have preferred a different approach to it.

Other problems have also occurred, such as accidents in dealing with infectious organisms in labs, etc. Those problems can also be linked to budget cuts. We seem to constantly cut off our collective nose to spite our face.

GOTV 2014 and Beyond! We need Democratic control of both houses of Congress!

[KittyWampus]

3. So to those DU'ers who might give Rick Perry a pass>>> this is the Republican model of government.

[MineralMan]

4. Pretty much.

We're not there to see what is being recommended to Texas with regard to this situation. But Texas is so concerned with its "states' rights" issues that issues of jurisdiction are almost certainly in play here. So, we get some guy in khakis using a power washer to deal with infectious waste on the sidewalks and nobody cleaning up the apartment where the patient was staying. Jurisdictional disputes and bureaucratic delays are the ugly truth of it.

I'm not giving anyone a pass, but things are not being done correctly. The bottom line is that Ebola-contaminated waste is a biohazard. It should be handled as a biohazard. It's not really different from any other biohazard in how it should be handled, either. But waiting isn't the answer, that's for sure.

We already know how to handle biohazards. We're just not doing it. That's very troublesome. The military has the equipment and trained personnel needed, since it's equipped for bio-chemical warfare. The CDC knows what needs to be done. I suspect that Texas is insisting that it will handle the problem, out of some sort of jurisdictional dispute.

There's unseen conflict going on, I'm sure.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. Cut the budgets of government agencies. Then, when

something bad happens and an agency can't manage the situation, complain about how government doesn't work and give the job to the private sector, which will screw it up worse and overcharge for it.

Government we can drown in a bathtub, along with all of us.

[MineralMan]

6. Yup. And that's compounded by jurisdiction disputes.

We have multiple agencies all bickering over what to do. The EPA says one thing. The CDC says another. The Texas state health department probably hasn't a clue. Meanwhile, there's a bio-chemical warfare response team that has the equipment and training to deal with this stationed somewhere that hasn't been called in.

Who's going to pay? Who will get the heat if something goes wrong? Who wants to take responsibility? Everyone's asking those questions and nobody wants anything to do with this mess.

Fortunately, the Ebola virus doesn't survive very long at all outside of the body, so the time that has already passed has probably rendered the stuff non-infectious. But that's just a matter of chance. The responses have been slow, incorrect or non-existent so far, and I believe it's because nobody wants to pay for or take responsibility for the response.

Bureaucracy at work.

[Johonny]

9. +1

[B2G]

7. They had a 8.2% increase this year

CDC wins in budget deal

Jan 17, 2014, 9:43am EST

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will see an 8.2 percent budget increase for fiscal 2014, thanks to a $1.1 trillion spending bill announced by Congress Jan. 13.

This influx of cash will raise the CDC budget to $6.9 billion, which is $567 million more than it received in 2013. This is more than the agency anticipated, because the president's fiscal year 2014 budget request for it was just $6.6 billion -- a decrease of $270 million from fiscal 2012.

The passage of the spending bill is welcome news to the CDC, which has faced more than $750 million in budget cuts since fiscal 2009. The agency is also preparing for a possible growth spurt within the next 10 years, and last week announced the availability of its Master Plan Draft Environmental Impact Statement for its "Roybal" campus on Clifton Road. Although no funding has been allocated for the project thus far, it could lead to a big new laboratory and parking structure, as well as an up to 30 percent increase in workers by the year 2025.

The Congressional omnibus spending package is designed to reduce spending cuts and provide cash for various government programs, but not all areas are seeing a spending increase. The Labor, Health and Human Services and Education portion of the bill, which includes the amount put aside for the CDC, includes discretionary funding of $156.8 billion dollars, which is $100 million less than fiscal 2013 and $9 billion below what President Barack Obama requested for these programs. No new funding for Obamacare, which the CDC is in charge of implementing, has been provided; in fact, the bill slices into the health care reform's existing funding.

The bipartisan bill encountered little objection, and was passed less than a week after it was announced. The U.S. House of Representatives approved it late Wednesday, and the U.S. Senate followed just a day later.



http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2014/01/17/cdc-wins-in-budget-deal.html?page=all

[MineralMan]

8. See the article at my link.

They had cut after cut prior to this year.