On the one hand I think it's outrageous and despicable. On the other hand, I shrug, because I know: This is what they do. To a Democrat, everything is political, and every problem that ever occurred would surely have been prevented by the wonderfulness of government if only Republicans had given them more money.
Oh, and of course, they're always happy to simply make stuff up if they think it will help them.
So when Sheila Jackson Lee stands up there and seriously tries to make the case that Republicans are at fault for Ebola, claiming budget cuts have left the Centers for Disease Control unable to respond quickly or effectively enough, why should anyone really be surprised?
Jackson Lee's claim is consistent with that of some group called the Agenda Project, which is running the following ad:
It's not true, by the way. National Review's Jim Geraghty
crunched the numbers and proved it:
The NIH budget has
doubled since 2000,
allocations to the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases rose to $4.3 billion in 2004 from $1.8 billion in 2000 . . .
Geraghty goes on to note that much of that the Obama Administration allocated much of that money to other things, but it was always available to the CDC.
So why doesn't the left know better than to politicize something like this? Because for them, if you take away the political context of anything, there is no context remaining. It's the only way they know how to view anything. There's a problem? We would have prevented it if only Republicans hadn't cut the budget! It makes no difference what it was. The logic applies to absolutely anything.
The truth, of course, is that in many ways the CDC dropped the ball here. Their protocols, which weren't followed in the first place, were insufficient. They didn't properly plan or execute. Now they're reviewing their protocols and trying to get it right, and I think they deserve credit for that, but when you drop the ball it's not because of your budget. It's because you just didn't do the job right.
Alleged Republican budget cuts could serve as the Obama Administration's all-purpose excuse for its own incompetence.
If only we'd had more money, we would have done a better job! But no. People who are completely inept will not do a good job no matter how much money you give them. They'll just screw up
and waste the money.
