Obama funding request on Ebola faces resistance

The Obama administration this month put together a wish list and a price tag on America’s global fight against the Ebola virus: $6.18 billion.

Of that sum, $1.83 billion would go to the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the spending request is getting a skeptical eye from Republicans in Congress, who question the size and the “emergency” nature of the spending – which would avoid the need to offset it with other cuts.

U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Savannah Republican who runs the subcommittee overseeing the CDC’s budget, pointed to a request for more than 50 permanent disease-fighting centers as evidence that the submission is not merely for an immediate crisis.

“It’s a money grab,” said Kingston, who is leaving Congress at year’s end.

Kingston noted that Congress just last month handed the Department of Defense $750 million for Ebola that it hasn't spent yet. The Ebola request, he pointed out, is bigger than the administration's $5.6 billion supplemental funding request to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

“Most people would say ISIS is a bigger threat right now,” Kingston said.

The administration says each section of the request is justified and necessary to combat a disease that remains rampant in West Africa, though there have been only a couple of U.S. patients.

Asked about the permanent centers, Gretchen Michael, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, replied via email: “Our Ebola experience has shown us the need for a more widespread capability in the U.S. to treat and manage infectious diseases that require high levels of isolation and bio containment, both for Ebola and for other infectious diseases. The emergency request would provide the funding to have such containment and treating capability in every state.”

The CDC’s $1.83 billion — a number Kingston, usually a CDC booster, called “aggressive” — would serve a variety of functions. CDC head Tom Frieden told Congress this month that $621 million would go “to fortify domestic public health systems.”

The request would fund entry screening at places such as Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport for travelers arriving from an Ebola-affected country and buy protective equipment for a national stockpile.

Frieden said $603 million would go toward the CDC’s efforts in Africa, such as educating locals about the disease and tracing who had had contact with victims.

The final $606 million is "to strengthen global health security, reducing risks to Americans by addressing unanticipated threats and enabling the world to detect them early, respond swiftly before they become epidemics, and prevent outbreaks wherever possible," Frieden said in prepared testimony before the U.S. Senate.

The CDC’s share is just a portion of the administration’s overall request. Among the other items are $238 million for clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health, $1.98 billion for the U.S. Agency for International Development in part to fund treatment centers and medical care in West Africa, and a $1.54 billion “contingency fund” intended to be a flexible stash of money to respond to unforeseen crises.

Congress does not plan to address the request as its own bill — it will be jammed in with a big spending bill ahead of a Dec. 11 deadline for funding the government, though the fate of an “omnibus” bill is in serious doubt.

President Barack Obama’s decision to take a big executive action on immigration — removing the threat of deportation for up to 5 million people here illegally — increases the chances Congress will opt for a status quo “continuing resolution” into January, when the new Republican Senate takes over and can launch a coordinated attack on the immigration action through the spending process. The Ebola money would likely be delayed and caught in the crossfire.

But key Democrats are standing by the administration.

At a hearing this month, Senate Appropriations Chairman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., pointed out that Congress made $6 billion available to fight the H1N1 flu in 2009.

“When disease strikes, Congress responds in a bipartisan way,” Mikulski said. “We provide emergency funding resources to respond at the epicenter, slow or stop the spread of the disease, provide treatment and prevent future outbreaks with new vaccines. That is just how we should respond this time to the Ebola crisis.”

U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop of Albany, one of the longest-tenured Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, said the size of the administration’s request is “appropriate.”

“I would think that with the deadly consequences of Ebola, that any right-thinking person would feel that the threat and the risk posed by Ebola is an emergency,” Bishop said.

But come January, Republicans will have full control of Congress.

U.S. Rep. Tom Graves, a Republican from Ranger who serves on the Appropriations Committee, said “we’re taking a closer look at” the request, given the administration’s “track record of overinflating and putting things in that do not necessarily address the situation at hand.”