Washington : The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, has blamed the Republicans, in a new electoral ad, for slashing the US Centres for Disease Control’s (CDC) budget for researching and combating diseases such as Ebola.
“Republicans voted to cut CDC’s budget to fight Ebola,” the commercial says, citing a 2011 budget vote that included cuts to the agency, while noting at the same time that conservatives “protect tax breaks for special interests”.
DCCC president and US representative for New York, Steve Israel, said in a communique that Republicans have “dangerous” priorities.
“House Republicans’ priorities aren’t just out-of-touch, they’re dangerous, and in their fervour to protect special interests’ tax breaks, Republicans even used their first budget vote to cut funding for the CDC that protects us from epidemics like Ebola,” Israel said.
The head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins, said Sunday in an interview with The Huffington Post that an Ebola vaccine could have been developed by now if it had not been for the budget cuts in recent years.
“Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready,” Collins said.
The US has its congressional elections in November, for the renovation of the entire lower house and two-thirds of the Senate.