Nope. Still relying on the ignorance of your fellow conservative to not remember history and the budget battles of Obama vs the Republican Congress.
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.”
Even in the aftermath of the swine flu pandemic, the stockpile wasn’t a priority for Republicans. Denny Rehberg (R-Montana) the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee responsible for overseeing the stockpile in 2011, introduced a bill that provided $522.5 million to the stockpile, about 12% less than the previous year and $132 million less than the Obama administration wanted. “Nobody got everything they wanted,” Rehberg said.
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 Republican 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 to find additional ways to reduce the deficit, or else it would trigger automatic across-the-board cuts known as
“sequestration.”
This is the kind of dicks republicans can be. They threw a hissy fit over Congress legally passing Obamacare (still crying about it), and passed laws to try and tie the Presidents ability to do line item vetos and used the sequestration and threats of a shut down to get their way. They didn't and don't care about lives, unless it's a fetus. Even now, they are willing to ignore science and do whatever it takes to make Trump look good. You are exactly what's wrong in America and thank goodness the people have been voting against Trump since 2017.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/3070/text (the Republican bill with cuts)
And every year Obama tried to get more dollars to address the stokpile issue- every year republicans rejected it:
www.nti.org
US supply stockpile for combating bioterror attacks and pandemics feels the strain of funding cuts.
www.nature.com
