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Ebola Is Back. And Trump Is Trying to Kill Funding for It.
As U.S. President Donald Trump announced his decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, the White House discreetly released an official proposal to cut funding for children’s health programs, Medicare, and Ebola responses. The two policies may seem unrelated, but they share the same basic design — assuming vast national security risks simply for the sake of dismantling former President Barack Obama’s legacy.
“I herewith report 38 rescissions of budget authority, totaling $15.4 billion,” reads Trump’s health program edict, referring to cuts — mostly in health care and emergency responses overseas — that he wants Congress to make in the current 2018 budget. By law, Congress has 45 days to agree to the cuts, throw them back to a veto challenge, or insist on further White House justification for the actions. The $15.4 billion slice off the $4.1 trillion federal budget is trivial, amounting to less than half a percent of government spending and making no appreciable dent in the $440 billion deficit created by the 2018 Consolidated Appropriations Act, enacted in March. In other words, there is no way Trump’s actions can be said to be motivated by fiscal responsibility, deficit reduction, or pursuit of a balanced federal budget.
Trump’s anti-Obama motive becomes apparent in rescission R18-27, which cuts $252 million in emergency response funding that had been set aside in the 2015 fiscal year during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, which claimed more than 11,300 lives. Obama, recognizing that the West African epidemic had the potential to become a national security crisis at home, asked Congress for roughly $1 billion in emergency funds to help the three affected countries combat the virus, deploy U.S. armed forces personnel, and sustain an all-hands-on-deck Centers for Disease Control and Prevention response that lasted well over a year. The $252 million that remained in the fund in 2018 had been reserved for use in building local capacities to spot and react to future Ebola outbreaks all over Africa.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/09/ebola-is-back-and-trump-is-trying-to-kill-funding-for-it/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
“I herewith report 38 rescissions of budget authority, totaling $15.4 billion,” reads Trump’s health program edict, referring to cuts — mostly in health care and emergency responses overseas — that he wants Congress to make in the current 2018 budget. By law, Congress has 45 days to agree to the cuts, throw them back to a veto challenge, or insist on further White House justification for the actions. The $15.4 billion slice off the $4.1 trillion federal budget is trivial, amounting to less than half a percent of government spending and making no appreciable dent in the $440 billion deficit created by the 2018 Consolidated Appropriations Act, enacted in March. In other words, there is no way Trump’s actions can be said to be motivated by fiscal responsibility, deficit reduction, or pursuit of a balanced federal budget.
Trump’s anti-Obama motive becomes apparent in rescission R18-27, which cuts $252 million in emergency response funding that had been set aside in the 2015 fiscal year during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, which claimed more than 11,300 lives. Obama, recognizing that the West African epidemic had the potential to become a national security crisis at home, asked Congress for roughly $1 billion in emergency funds to help the three affected countries combat the virus, deploy U.S. armed forces personnel, and sustain an all-hands-on-deck Centers for Disease Control and Prevention response that lasted well over a year. The $252 million that remained in the fund in 2018 had been reserved for use in building local capacities to spot and react to future Ebola outbreaks all over Africa.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/09/ebola-is-back-and-trump-is-trying-to-kill-funding-for-it/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
14 replies
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I'm afraid this might not end well...
Greed, apathy, and hollow souls.
But goddamn it, I am.
This is so fucked up. I am livid.
He has no soul.
