A new ad by a group called Agenda Project Action Fund claims that Republicans are responsible for cuts in Ebola research. The Washington Post calls foul, giving the ad four Pinocchios. WaPo,
This ad is simply a more extreme version of a new Democratic talking point—that GOP budget cuts have harmed the nation’s ability to handle the Ebola outbreak. It mixes statistics – the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “cut” $585 million (the ad offers no date range)—with disturbing images of the outbreak and various Republican leaders saying variations of the word “cut.” …
This line of attack was prompted by remarks by National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins, who told the Huffington Post that the agency has been working on an Ebola vaccine for more than a decade, but was hampered by shrinking budgets…
Whose idea was sequestration? It was originally a White House proposal, designed to force Congress to either swallow painful cuts or boost taxes. The law mandating sequestration passed on a bipartisan vote—and then Republican embraced it even more strongly when they could not reach a grand budget deal with President Obama.
For fiscal year 2015, the documents show, it was the Obama White House that proposed to cut the NIH’s budget from the previous year. Moreover, we should note that President George W. Bush, a Republican, is responsible for significantly boosting NIH’s funding in the early years of his presidency.
