`Go Flu Yourself':
Bush/Cheney Cut CDC Budget
in Vaccine Crisis
Oct. 26, 2004—George W. Bush and Dick Cheney say: Their government's health agencies are now doing everything possible to solve the flu vaccine crisiswhich their reckless negligence brought on. Bush and Cheney are lying again: They're trying, as they speak, to cut the budgets of those same agencies! For you, if you're sick, they're retooling Cheney's favorite insult: "Go flu yourself!"
That simple solution to the crisis threatens to kill more Americans than died in the 9/11 attacks. Warned repeatedly over three years that the vaccine production breakdown was coming, the Bush-Cheney Administration did absolutely nothing. They left it to the "invisible hand" of the "free market" to decide whether you and your loved ones live or diefrom a preventable illness. Now, they continue to refuse to take any remedial actions: To declare a national emergency and put the entire resources of the Federal government into play to save American lives. And they talk about the war on terrorism and homeland security? This is criminal fraud, and their cynical lies put American lives in jeopardy.
Here are the facts:
In an act of criminal negligence, after a full-blown vaccine shortage crisis has developed across the country, the Bush-Cheney White House is proposing to cut $256 million from the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in this year's budget , the Fiscal 2005 budget. The White House wants to take $105 million of that cut from aid to state and local governments' public health preparedness.
And Bush, Tom DeLay, and the Republican leadership just put a 75¢ tax on every dose of vaccine administered in America, in the tax bill Bush just signed!
Bush/Cheney and the Congressional Republican leadership squelched a bill ten months ago which would have avoided this foreseeable and deadly flu crisis: the Flu Prevention Act of 2004. Senator Evan Bayh and Rep. Rahm Emanuel introduced this bill in January 2004 to stop the disappearance of vaccine manufacturers in the United States, and create new ones, with a small intervention of Federal funds. Bush and Cheney didn't want it. Now it's been introduced again, and they still don't want it.
Ten percent of all the emergency rooms in America have closed since 1993, and the association of ER doctors is asking the Bush White House to use Federal emergency public health funds to reopen as many as possible now, to prevent deaths from pneumonia, especially among older or sick citizens who get the flu . Bush has made no response; instead, he wants to cut the Federal health budget!
The Reed-Kennedy Flu Response Act of 2004 was introduced to mandate immediate licensing of vaccines approved for use in Europe, Canada, or Japan, so we can import them; and to give the government power to find out where all the scarce vaccine has been shipped, and direct its redistribution to the people who need it most. Bush and Cheney don't want this either; it interferes with the "market" in flu vaccineswhich is disappearing.
It's not just flu vaccine disappearing. On George W. Bush's "watch," American soldiers in large numbers at U.S. bases are coming down with adenovirus infection, the "boot camp virus," because the vaccine isn't produced at all any more. Some military leaders wanted this changed several years agonothing was done by the Bush Administration. (The armed forces are short 65% of the flu vaccine they ordered for this year.) And almost all the childhood vaccines have been in shortage throughout Bush's term.
The only increased funding for vaccines was mandated in a ten-year-old law pushed by President Bill Clinton, the Childhood Vaccination Act of 1993. That law is the sole reason Bush puffed up in the Presidential debate and claimed his Administration increased funding to fight influenza. Bill Clinton made him do it!
If they get a chance, Bush and Cheney will cut that budget after Election Day, with the budgets for health, the Veterans Administration, economic infrastructure, housingwhile they push to privatize Social Security.
The same President George W. Bush who ignored official warnings since 2001 about a collapse of vaccine production; who then gloated in the last debate with Sen. John Kerry that he, personally, didn't need a flu shot; is now acting willfully and knowledgeably to perpetuate this vaccine crisis into next year. Dick Cheneywhose home state has the lowest child-vaccination rates in Americawants the funds diverted to his policy, perpetual war.
If Bush and Cheney are not voted out for this indifference to the general welfare of Americans, the shortage of influenza and other vaccines will continue and worsen. They're handling the public health crisis like they're handling Iraqwith gloating smugness, reckless negligence, sneering indifference to the consequences for human life. Thousands of senior citizens, young children, and chronically ill Americans will die avoidable deaths. Prevent it. You have a few days. Organize the vote to get them out!
Paid for by the LaRouche PAC
And Not Authorized by Any Candidate or Candidate's Committee