Wednesday, October 15, 2014

 

Obama Also Pushed For CDC Cuts In Years Before Ebola Outbreak

Recent attacks by a Democratic outside group blame congressional Republicans for exacerbating the Ebola epidemic by continuously seeking to cut funds for government health agencies.

But the charge leaves out a critical point. President Barack Obama hasn't been consistent on funding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the dominant U.S. public health agency combating the outbreak. In some years, he's been a budgetary champion for the CDC. In other years, he's bowed to austerity.

During Obama's first three years in the White House, the CDC's total funding increased from $6.64 billion to $7.16 billion, according to figures provided by the administration. Those funding levels were all higher than what was in place at the end of the Bush years.

After the GOP took control of the House in 2011, the administration protected CDC funding by relying on new funding streams from the Affordable Care Act. But the CDC's total budget fell by $430 million in fiscal year 2013, and the president can't blame Republicans for the drop. The president's funding requests for the CDC dropped too.

In FY 2010, the budget authority requested by the president for the CDC was $6.38 billion, according to administration figures. That number went up to $6.68 billion in FY 2011. It then decreased sharply to $5.89 billion in FY 2012 (Page 85). The cuts were softened by the fact that the CDC received money from additional funding streams. In that fiscal year, additional funding streams actually resulted in a higher overall account for the CDC than the prior year. (Hence, how it ended up with $7.16 billion.)

But these non-traditional funding sources couldn't reverse the general movement to austerity the following year. The president's budget authority that year was $5.06 billion (Page 113). The funding for the CDC that year ended up at $6.73 billion after the other accounts were taken into effect.

An administration official acknowledged to The Huffington Post that “sequestration and tight budget caps have had an impact on a range of critical health care programs." But the official said the totality of the funding -- as opposed to just the budget requests for the CDC -- underscored that even "within a constrained environment, the Administration has prioritized CDC funding over the years with significant increases for control of infectious diseases." The official noted that other sources, such as the Prevention and Public Health Fund, helped keep funding levels stable even during the most austere times.

Still, the fact that the president went along with those austere times complicates the attacks that Democrats are making against Republicans today. A new ad by the group Agenda Project Action Fund all but accused the GOP of letting people die by draining funds from the CDC and the National Institutes of Health. Certainly, it's fair to say that Republicans were more interested than Democrats in cutting the budgets of those agencies during the past few years. But the president's budget requests didn't provide the sternest of pushbacks, and indeed explicitly posed significant cuts at times.

The White House has recently moved away from austerity. The president's recent budget includes a slight increase in both CDC and NIH funding -- though well short of what Democrats and medical research advocates say is necessary. According to administration figures, Obama requested $5.47 billion for the CDC for FY 2015, which is a $180 million increase from FY 2014.

Budget figures are often in dispute. And so, other media outlets that have looked at the president's requests have put forward different statistics. Separate documents put together by the CDC do provide slightly different numbers, but they tell the same general story:
  • In FY 2010, the budget request for CDC funding was $6.31 billion.
  • In FY 2011, it was $6.26 billion. That year the Prevention and Public Health Fund helped soften the blow by adding $610 million.
  • In FY 2012, the budget request was $5.81 billion while the Prevention and Public Health Fund helped soften the blow by adding $752 million.
  • In FY 2013, the budget request was $4.99 billion, while the Prevention and Public Health Fund helped soften the blow by adding $903 million.
  • In FY 2014, the budget request was $5.22 billion, while the Prevention and Public Health Fund helped soften the blow by adding $755 million.
  • In FY 2015, the budget request is $5.39 billion, while the Prevention and Public Health Fund is expected to add an additional $809 million.
Tags : ,

Share

Social

The idea behind the text.
Respect for the truth is almost the basis of all morality.
Nothing can come from nothing.



Popular Topics

Read

Well, the way they make shows is, they make one show. That show's called a pilot. Then they show that show to the people who make shows, and on the strength of that one show they decide if they're going to make more shows.

Like you, I used to think the world was this great place where everybody lived by the same standards I did, then some kid with a nail showed me I was living in his world, a world where chaos rules not order, a world where righteousness is not rewarded. That's Cesar's world, and if you're not willing to play by his rules, then you're gonna have to pay the price.

You think water moves fast? You should see ice. It moves like it has a mind. Like it knows it killed the world once and got a taste for murder. After the avalanche, it took us a week to climb out. Now, I don't know exactly when we turned on each other, but I know that seven of us survived the slide... and only five made it out. Now we took an oath, that I'm breaking now. We said we'd say it was the snow that killed the other two, but it wasn't. Nature is lethal but it doesn't hold a candle to man.

You see? It's curious. Ted did figure it out - time travel. And when we get back, we gonna tell everyone. How it's possible, how it's done, what the dangers are. But then why fifty years in the future when the spacecraft encounters a black hole does the computer call it an 'unknown entry event'? Why don't they know? If they don't know, that means we never told anyone. And if we never told anyone it means we never made it back. Hence we die down here. Just as a matter of deductive logic.