Is More Money Needed for Ebola?

  |  

There’s two sides to every coin.  On one side ($):

“The CDC and NIH clearly do not have the resources they need,” said Rosa DeLauro, ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, said in a statement to CQ Roll Call. “Congress should immediately come back to Washington and vote to provide emergency funds before the November election. If we do not do so, our ability to fight and cure diseases could be at risk.”

And on the other side:

The director of the National Institutes for Health claims a vaccine for Ebola “probably” would have been developed by now if not for the stagnant funding for the agency, which has a $30 billion annual budget. Yet NIH did come up with the money to pay to give Swedish massages for rabbits [emphasis added].

The NIH also doled out money to investigate the meditation effects of reading Buddhist literature ($533,376).  And it spent money sending text messages to alcoholics ($480,500), obese people ($2.7 million), and meth addicts ($360,113).

These questionable projects (and unfortunately more) come from Senator Tom Coburn’s 2014 Wastebook.  It should be required reading for anyone who thinks the government is wisely spending our money, and thus, deserves more of our hard-earned tax dollars.