When Obama gave his speech on the economy to Congress in February, Bobby Jindal was the chosen Republican respondent. He made something of a laughing stock of himself at the time; and a few weeks later, when a volcano erupted in Alaska, his having ridiculed the inclusion of volcano monitoring in the stimulus plan came back to haunt him. Ridicule got bounced back to ridicule him.
Well, now there's another one. It turns out that one of the demands that Sen. Susan Collins required for her support was eliminating the funding for planning and fighting a pandemic.
Now we are facing the real possibility of a swine flu pandemic.
Republican short-sightedness knows no bounds.
Ralph
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In fairness to Sen. Collins, I'm not sure that she was opposes public health funding for pandemic preparedness or just thought it shouldn't be part of the stimulus bill.
ReplyDeleteBut now that we are seeing world financial markets already affected by the pandemic threat, and the whole travel industry is taking a big hit, it seems like pandemic preparedness is not unrelated to our financial health. Look what happened several years ago when the avian flu pandemic decimated the travel industry for a season.