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Do the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Need More?

Daily Policy Digest

Federal Spending & The Budget

Friday, December 07, 2001

Research facilities of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a national disgrace, says Surgeon General David Satcher, promoting a bipartisan proposal by Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), and Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to boost the CDC coffers by $3.2 billion.

However, critics point out that the CDC's overall annual budget is nearly $4 billion -- and growing.

And this year the CDC received more than $100 million in additional funds for building upgrades and repairs.

Yet Satcher and public health officials carp about the labs' crumbling infrastructure -- leaky roofs, termite-infested floors, broken air conditioners, overcrowded offices, and dilapidated refrigerators -- saying it is "the fault of the nation, not the fault of the CDC."

Yet over the past decade, instead of focusing primarily on infectious diseases, the agency splurged on kiddie condom ads, "anti-bullying" lessons, anti-smoking propaganda, gender inequity awareness, anti-gun junk science, public relations campaigns against "social" diseases (such as TV violence), and other Big Brother behavior modification programs.

And a report issued earlier this year by the U.S. General Accounting Office and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP concluded that the CDC's financial management staff was largely "incompetent" and that its managers had "little or no accounting experience."

Perhaps, say critics, Satcher has been too busy teaching kindergarteners about birth control to read the government's own reviews of how the CDC squanders public funds.

Source: Michelle Malkin, "Stop throwing money at CDC," December 5, 2001, Townhall.com.

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