^{Chapman’s News & Ideas} Partisan Jibes on Ebola

There apparently is an attempt to blame Republicans and “budget cuts” for the lack of preparation of the Center for Disease Control to prepare adequately for the Ebola challenge. An ad makes that claim before the mid-term elections.

But a more productive critique comes from Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who knows a lot about public health care policies and believes the problem with the CDC is misuse of resources. Jindal points out that CDC mission creep has soaked up resources from battles against communicable disease and used them for much lower priority concerns, such as promoting safer sidewalks and street lighting. The CDC has a budget that has tripled in 15 years. It tackles all kinds of tasks, such as encouraging farmers markets as a way to improve healthy eating. All well and good. But it has not kept pace with the threats of pandemics such as Ebola.