re: #196 Obdicut

Well, you’re wrong.

[Link: www.cdc.gov…]

The presidential budget represented a $60,000,000 increase in the infectious diseases budget— it has some cuts in it, but that one transfer from the 2009 pandemic budget brings it up to a $60,000,000 increase.

So the GOP is cutting, even if you want to pretend that for some reason we should use last years funding as the level we’re talking about cutting from, a cut of $90 million from this program at the CDC.

Which, as I’ve said, is going to wind up costing us more money in the end.

Penny wise and dollar-stupid: the modern self-proclaimed fiscal conservative is anything but.

You still haven’t answered - what figure are you saying the GOP proposal will be for actual spending on immunization etc ?

The CDC had 200 million in emergency pandemic funds for 2009, and 300 million from the stimulus for this category.
As far as I can tell, most of that hasn’t been spent. That leaves rather a lot of room for cuts in new funding which wouldn’t be “cuts” at all if they use some of the unspent money instead.

And the only meaningful way to compare spending is against the previous years actual budget, not some other proposal for the current year. If Obama proposed a 1 billion increase and the GOP proposed a 800 million increase, that would be a “cut” of 200 million by the accounting methods favoured by some leftie demagogues.