Members of the Democratic Party have repeatedly made false or misleading claims this week over the coronavirus outbreak in an apparent attempt to damage President Donald Trump. Even worse, many of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have proposed policies that would likely put the U.S. at greater risk of having an outbreak.
The Associated Press fact-checked Democratic presidential candidates Michael Bloomberg and Joe Biden over attacks they made on Trump this week.
Bloomberg said: “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded – he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing.”
Biden, comparing the Obama-Biden administration to the current administration, said: “We increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. … He’s wiped all that out. … He cut the funding for the entire effort.”
The AP debunked the claims, reporting:
They’re both wrong to say the agencies have seen their money cut. Bloomberg is repeating the false allegation in a new ad that states the U.S. is unprepared for the virus because of “reckless cuts” to the CDC. Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has increased.
Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) promoted a claim from far-left Democrat Senator Brian Schatz (HI), who wrote: “The Coronavirus is not contained. It will not fade in the spring. Trump cut CDC by 9 percent. Trump eliminated the position at the global health security teams at NSC and DHS. They don’t know what they are doing. They are fixated on the politics and the stock market.”
Not only is the claim that Trump cut CDC funding wrong, but Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to promote the bogus attack about Trump eliminating a position at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shows her hypocrisy as she called for eliminating the entire DHS last year.
Ocasio-Cortez is trying to score political points by attacking Trump for eliminating a position at the Department of Homeland Security
Last year, Ocasio-Cortez called for eliminating the *entire* Department of Homeland Security: https://t.co/BsNG5YdfFz pic.twitter.com/u0LD2YdPvt
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) February 26, 2020
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren politicized the outbreak in an effort to help her campaign, which has been on the fritz for some time now, stating that she would eliminate funding for the border wall – which is an important national security objective – in order to fight the coronavirus.
Warren tweeted, “Coronavirus poses a serious health, diplomatic, & economic threat, & we must be prepared to confront it head-on. So I’m introducing a bill to transfer all funding for @realDonaldTrump’s racist border wall to @HHSGov & @USAID to combat coronavirus.”
People playing politics with this debate should be roundly condemned by everyone, and do I need to point out the irony of attacking border control right now? https://t.co/LOQPoYxlwq
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) February 27, 2020
On the issue of policy, many of the proposals that the 2020 Democrats are running on would put the U.S. at far greater risk of having an outbreak.
Biden, Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren have all stated that taxpayer-funded health care should be given to illegal aliens, which reports state would act as a magnet and could attract sick people from around the world to come to the U.S.
We need a vaccine that is available to all, not just those who can afford it.
Let me be clear: it has never been more important to finally guarantee health care as a human right by passing Medicare for All. 3/3
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 27, 2020
In 2018, The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board wrote the following about the state of California providing taxpayer-funded health care for illegal aliens:
As the report notes, declaring a healthcare-for-all policy would make California a magnet for anyone who needed expensive healthcare. In other words, it would make the state a hotbed for medical tourism — on California’s dime.
In a report on the health care proposals from the 2020 Democrats, The Federalist reported:
By eliminating virtually all patient payments for their own care, single payer would increase demand for care—demand Bruenig concedes the system likely could not meet, even under normal circumstances. Consider that an outbreak centered more than 6,000 miles from the Pacific coast has already led to a run on respiratory face masks in the United States. During a widespread outbreak on our shores, an influx of both sick and worried-but-well patients could swamp hospitals already facing higher demand for “free” care.
…
Including a system of global budgets as part of a transition to single payer would leave hospitals with little financial flexibility to cope with a sudden surge of patients. Sanders’s Senate version of single-payer legislation does not include such a payment mechanism, but the House single-payer bill does. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other liberal think-tanks believe the concept, which provides hospitals lump-sum payments to cover the facilities’ entire operating budget, can help reduce health-care costs.
But in its May 2019 report on single payer, the Congressional Budget Office noted that consistently slow growth of global budget payments in Britain’s National Health Service has “created severe financial strains on the health care system.” And how: Rising hospital bed occupancy rates have created longer wait times in emergency rooms, with patients stuck on gurneys for hours. In one example of its annual “winter crisis,” two years ago the NHS postponed 55,000 surgeries due to capacity constraints, with one ER physician apologizing for “Third World conditions of the department due to overcrowding.”
A British health system barely able to cope with a predictable occurrence like a winter flu outbreak seems guaranteed to crumble in the face of a major pandemic. Voters lured by the siren song of socialism should bear that in mind as they ponder news of the coronavirus and Sanders’ “Medicare for All.”
Sanders, who aggressively backs giving illegal aliens taxpayer-funded health care, has also said that he is open to tearing down border barriers on the southern border and has also stated that he wants to abolish Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is the front line in protecting America’s borders.
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) researcher Spencer Raley wrote in an analysis of illegal immigration that “welfare programs and refundable tax credits” were major drivers of illegal immigration.
While the U.S. should help citizens of other nations if it can, that does not mean that the U.S. should open up its borders to treat people here.
So far, the administration has pledged $100 million in financial assistance to China and other nations impacted by the coronavirus.
A report late last year from the prestigious Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that the United States was by far the most prepared nation to handle an epidemic.
The 140 Global Health Security Index questions are organized across seven categories:
- Overall
- Prevention: Prevention of the emergence or release of pathogens
- Detection and Reporting: Early detection and reporting for epidemics of potential international concern
- Rapid Response: Rapid response to and mitigation of the spread of an epidemic
- Health System: Sufficient and robust health system to treat the sick and protect health workers
- Compliance with International Norms: Commitments to improving national capacity, financing plans to address gaps, and adhering to global norms
- Risk Environment: Overall risk environment and country vulnerability to biological threats
The report ranked the United States:
- Overall: #1
- Prevention: #1
- Detection and Reporting: #1
- Rapid Response: #2
- Health System: #1
- Compliance with International Norms: #1
- Risk Environment: #19
The Trump administration has aggressively moved to combat the coronavirus as it established a task force to fight it over a month ago; has attempted for the last 2 months to have the CDC enter China to assist in containing the outbreak and researching the virus; has pledged $100 million to other countries to combat it; immediately banned flights from China; has soughs $2.5 billion to combat the virus in the U.S. and agreed to give Congress even more when it was asked; has considered using special powers that it has that would boost domestic manufacturing to combat the virus; and has ordered the Navy to have all ships that have visited countries in the Pacific region to self-quarantine for 14 days.
So, the Coronavirus, which started in China and spread to various countries throughout the world, but very slowly in the U.S. because President Trump closed our border, and ended flights, VERY EARLY, is now being blamed, by the Do Nothing Democrats, to be the fault of “Trump”.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2020