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This is partisan misinformation: https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104

Spellman 7y ago
Both can be true. From an on-the-ground perspective, most of the infrastructure is intact and the day-to-day works of the CDC is running as normal. However, it seems like the top few officials have constantly been rotated, including now Mike Pence is in charge, meaning the ability to lead and organize mass response at a Federal level is handicapped.
tristanj 7y ago
I strongly disagree. The articles I linked talk about 2018 budget cuts and eliminations that went through. The article you linked talk about proposed 2020 budget cuts, and how they came up at this week's democratic debate. They are not the same issue. Taken from the FP article linked above: >In the spring of 2018, the White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Under fire from both sides of the aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later. But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated. >In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent, the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced. In 2018, 80% of the staff working at the CDC global health section were let go because of Trump budget cuts.

Spellman 7y ago

Both can be true. From an on-the-ground perspective, most of the infrastructure is intact and the day-to-day works of the CDC is running as normal. However, it seems like the top few officials have constantly been rotated, including now Mike Pence is in charge, meaning the ability to lead and organize mass response at a Federal level is handicapped.

tristanj 7y ago

I strongly disagree. The articles I linked talk about 2018 budget cuts and eliminations that went through. The article you linked talk about proposed 2020 budget cuts, and how they came up at this week's democratic debate. They are not the same issue. Taken from the FP article linked above: >In the spring of 2018, the White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Under fire from both sides of the aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later. But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated. >In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent, the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced. In 2018, 80% of the staff working at the CDC global health section were let go because of Trump budget cuts.