Van Hollen: Cuts to CDC, NIH ‘short-sighted’

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said Friday that Congress should approve additional funding to combat Ebola when lawmakers return, calling cuts to health agencies “short-sighted.”

The stopgap funding bill approved by Congress in September that lasts through Dec. 11 includes $88 million to accelerate Ebola research and respond to the outbreak in West Africa.

{mosads}Van Hollen told The Hill that the next spending measure Congress considers when it returns in November should include extra funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“I think we should provide whatever additional amounts are necessary for CDC and NIH in December, when Congress comes back into session, in addition to the effort to tackle the problem at its source in West Africa,” Van Hollen said in an interview.

The Maryland Democrat said shortcomings in the U.S. response to Ebola should be a lesson.

“I hope, as Congress considers the budgets in the future, they’ll recognize that cuts that have been made to NIH are short-sighted for a whole variety of reasons,” Van Hollen said. 

“We also need to increase our funding on medical research generally across the board. We’re looking at Ebola right now, but there are all sorts of diseases that impact Americans and American families on a regular basis,” he added.

Democrats have been running campaign ads attacking Republicans for backing budget cuts to the CDC and the NIH. The ads came in light of NIH Director Francis Collins stating this week that an Ebola vaccine could have been developed by now if not for budget cuts.

“Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have gone through clinical trials and would have been ready,” Collins said.

Republicans have pushed back against the accusations, noting that Congress provided the CDC with $6.9 billion in fiscal 2014, which was more funding than the Obama administration’s $6.6 billion request. They have also argued that sequestration cuts across the federal government were part of a bipartisan budget agreement.

But Van Hollen said that statements from the heads of the CDC and the NIH about the effects of budget cuts shouldn’t be ignored.

“This is not something being made up in terms of the impact of funding on readiness,” Van Hollen said. 

Some Republicans have suggested that Congress should vote on instituting a travel ban on West African countries afflicted by the Ebola outbreak. The Obama administration has said that a travel ban would only make it harder for medical workers to reach West Africa to combat Ebola and to track anyone traveling from the region.

“I do think they need to do a better job of explaining their rationale,” Van Hollen said of the Obama administration. “But right now, we should keep politics out of this.”