When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.
With a major political party actually hostile to the idea of public health, not a good idea to be reading Daniel Kalla bio-terror novels like Pandemic, in case anyone brought some of this genre of books for their girlfriend last Valentines Day.
I thought the Republicans voted against the stimulus bill?
ReplyDeleteYou mean they wrecked it before they voted against it?
Let’s see the Democrats control every position in the federal government and the Republicans have all the power?
Nice spin. Why not just do the usual, blame it on Bush and head on?
Thanks for the comment.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm not sure that you read Nichols' piece.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/430261?rel=hp_picks
Note:
"But former White House political czar Karl Rove and key congressional Republicans -- led by Maine Senator Susan Collins -- aggressively attacked the notion that there was a connection between pandemic preparation and economic recovery."
... "Famously, Maine Senator Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: 'Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not.' Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate's version of the stimulus measure."
In fact, you may wish to read the whole article.