Propublica: How Tea Party Budget Battles Left the National Emergency Medical Stockpile Unprepared fo

[SheltieLover]

[link:https://www.propublica.org/article/us-emergency-medical-stockpile-funding-unprepared-coronavirus|

SERIES:CORONAVIRUS

How Tea Party Budget Battles Left the National Emergency Medical Stockpile Unprepared for Coronavirus
Fiscal restraints imposed by Republicans in Congress in the early years of the Obama administration left the U.S. less prepared to respond to the coronavirus pandemic today.

Much, much more at link.

Love Propublica! 🤩

[bronxiteforever]

1. Kick and recommend.

[crickets]

2. I am so tired of Republicans making excuses for their short-sighted partisan idiocy.

"Who knew?" The people asking for enough resources to do their jobs knew. YOU knew, you just won't admit it. Fools.

After using up the swine flu emergency funds, the Obama administration tried to replenish the stockpile in 2011 by asking Congress to provide $655 million, up from the previous year’s budget of less than $600 million. Responding to swine flu, which the CDC estimated killed more than 12,000 people in the United States over the course of a year, had required the largest deployment in the stockpile’s history, including nearly 20 million pieces of personal protective equipment and more than 85 million N95 masks, according to a 2016 report published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

“We recognized the need for replenishment of the stockpile and budgeted about a 10% increase,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration. “That was rejected by the Republican House.”

Republicans took over the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms on the Tea Party wave of opposition to the landmark 2010 health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The new House majority was intent on curbing government spending, especially at HHS, which administered Obamacare.

Congressional Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell in the Senate and House Speaker John Boehner, leveraged the debt ceiling — a limit on the government’s borrowing ability that had to be raised — to insist that the Obama administration accept federal spending curbs. The compromise, codified in the 2011 Budget Control Act, required a bipartisan “super committee” to find additional ways to reduce the deficit, or else it would trigger automatic across-the-board cuts known as “sequestration.”

And there he is again. Moscow Mitch.

There is much more at the link. It's a good article and well worth the read.


eta - sorry, bronxiteforever. I meant to reply to the thread. Oops!

[bronxiteforever]

4. +1 Important but anger provoking

information. No worries! we are in this GOP hell together!

[Initech]

3. The Tea Party - another creation of Fox News.

God, just imagine where we would be if that worthless piece of shit network didn't exist.

[JHB]

5. Figured something like this might be a factor in the "it's Obama's fault" talking points

[tenderfoot]

6. K&R

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

7. K&R