Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is renewing calls for the Senate to confirm Dr. Vivek Murthy as surgeon general before the end of the lame-duck session.
“Every day without a Surgeon General, our nation’s public health preparedness is weaker,” Murphy wrote in an op-ed for The Huffington Post.
Murphy said the Ebola epidemic overseas — and the panic that its brought to the U.S. — is an example of why a surgeon general is urgently needed.
He pointed to the woman who tried to board a flight at Dulles with a homemade hazmat suit and parents who have taken their kids out of school as evidence of widespread — though unwarranted — fear in the U.S.
The surgeon general nominee, a Yale-trained doctor, was first nominated more than a year ago. He has faced opposition from the GOP for his support of ObamaCare as well as his view that guns present a public health issue.
Murphy, one of the Senate’s biggest gun control advocates in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting, said the nominee’s stance on guns is just one piece of his agenda.
He added that opposition to the surgeon general is “dangerous.”
“But Dr. Murthy has, in fact, gone out of his way to make it clear that in his role as Surgeon General he will focus solely on public health issues — not guns or health insurance policy,” wrote Murphy, who sits on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.