The Ebola Democrats

October 9 | Posted by mrossol | Big Govt, Democrat Party, Party Politics

Who needs facts or all the numbers?
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Frantic to hold the Senate, Democrats are now claiming Republicans are pro-Ebola—really. Anything is better than having to defend White House competence or even the adequacy of the public-health response, though this election debate would benefit from a fact or two.

Here’s a heavy-rotation TV spot from Arkansas incumbent Mark Pryor against his GOP opponent: “ 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. . . . Instead, Cotton voted for tax cuts for billionaires funding his campaign, rather than protecting our families.”

To the extent there’s a substantive claim here, Democrats say “disinvestment” and “austerity cuts” have harmed U.S. and international public-health agencies. That’s the diagnosis of Senate Health Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, who added in a statement that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “must have the equipment and resources it needs to ensure we have a state-of-the-art public health agency protecting America.”

This portrait of CDC poverty is even dumber than the notion that Republicans are to blame. Liberals focus on the agency’s base budget authority, which has fallen to $5.792 billion in 2014 from $6.389 billion in 2010.

But a lot of the CDC’s funding arrives outside of the normal budget process, with Congress making emergency and supplemental appropriations as the need arises, as with Ebola. The Affordable Care Act’s Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF) has also supplanted dollars that used to be distributed through regular order.

Counting all sources, the CDC and its sister unit the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry ran a budget of $10.791 billion in 2014. The average for the Obama years is $10.823 billion including the stimulus, while the average for George W. Bush ’s second term was $8.721 billion (all-in data are available only as far back as 2003). This year’s CDC budget is a 35.2% increase over a decade ago. What austerity?

According to the National Health Expenditures accounts, total federal and state funding for “public health activity” rose to $74.991 billion in 2012, a 13.7% increase over 2007 and 180.1% over 1993. Over the same periods, Medicare spending alone jumped 32.3% in five years and 281.7% in 20.

The CDC is more productive and better managed than most federal agencies, and divisions like its emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases shop do important work. By all means, give them and the National Institutes of Health more money. But liberals forget that every income-transfer payment means fewer dollars for value-add science, and thus the failure to reform the entitlement state crowds out other government obligations.

There’s also another measure of White House priorities, which is that ObamaCare public health fund. The PPHF automatically hands the Health and Human Services bureaucracy $15 billion this decade and after that $2 billion a year, with no earmarks, in perpetuity. HHS (of which the CDC is a part) can dip into this honey pot for whatever it pleases.

In 2013 HHS raided the PPHF of $453.8 million, or 48% of that year’s appropriation, to fund the ObamaCare insurance exchanges. Those PPHF dollars that have flowed to public health are an insult to this once august field. The PPHF sponsors liberal pressure groups to lobby states and cities for higher tobacco taxes and zoning laws that restrict fast food, and its other urgent causes include dance fitness, massage therapy, painting bike lanes, salad bars in school cafeterias, pet neutering and urban gardening.

The core of public health used to be society’s interest in securing the conditions necessary for human survival—mainly meaning epidemiology and combating communicable diseases. The pity is that all too often the current CDC has diluted its mission and budget by funding political causes that the doctors and troops in West Africa (and Texas) don’t need. The list extends to anti-bullying, trans fats, prescription opiate abuse, college rape prevention, workplace wellness, “racial and ethnic approaches to community health,” and promoting breast feeding.

Meanwhile, more than 40,000 U.S. adults die every year from pathogens that are preventable though immunization, like measles and whooping cough. The public doesn’t expect miracles, even from Democrats who pretend they can perform them. But liberals would be more honest if they didn’t assail Republicans as if tax dollars are infinite, waste is nonexistent and the solution to every government failure is more government.

As for that great liberal allegiance to public health? An MSBNC reporter asked Senator Pryor to evaluate the Administration’s Ebola campaign. He was silent for a few beats, then said “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh” and demurred that he hadn’t been briefed. Lobbed another softball, Mr. Pryor said that “my impression is that we have people over there both from CDC and other medical-type people and even some engineers who try to build, um, you know, medical facilities. That’s what they need.”

The Ebola Democrats – WSJ – WSJ.

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