Angela GreilingKeaneVerified account @agreilingkeane "Our thoughts and prayers" are with the #Ebola-stricken health workers: Obama
https://twitter.com/search?q=obama%20ebola&src=typd
Posted on 10/15/2014 2:24:34 PM PDT by maggief
House Democrats are pushing back hard against proposals to institute a travel ban in the fight against the Ebola virus.
A growing number of lawmakers — mostly Republicans — are urging the Obama administration to bar travel to the United States for the roughly 13,000 foreign visa holders living in the West African countries where the disease is most rampant.
But Democrats are rejecting that strategy, arguing that it would both be ineffective and could worsen the epidemic in those African hot spots.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said Wednesday that U.S. officials should instead focus their efforts on enhanced health screenings, both overseas and in domestic airports, and cement the healthcare protocols designed to eliminate the spread of the disease in the United States. "I don't think we gain anything by spending our time talking about quarantines" of entire countries, Jackson Lee said in a phone interview. "We don't have an epidemic, and for that reason I don't think that calling for a quarantine of countries answers the question. We have to turn internally and look at our own selves and make sure our health infrastructure is where it needs to be."
Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) piled on, characterizing a travel ban as an ill-advised "quick fix" that "will only exacerbate the epidemic in the region."
"Aside from being impractical, this reactionary strategy will force Ebola patients underground making it nearly impossible to track their movements, hinder the capacity for international healthcare workers to transport and administer critical aid, and erode the continent’s fragile economy," Moore said Wednesday in a statement.
The comments come as the debate over how U.S. response to the Ebola threat has taken a decidedly partisan turn, even in Texas, where a second healthcare worker was diagnosed with the disease early Wednesday morning.
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Wednesday joined a growing chorus of conservatives
in calling on the administration to bar travel from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — where Ebola has reached epidemic levels — until those countries have eradicated the threat.
“Common sense dictates that we should impose a travel ban on commercial airline flights from nations afflicted by Ebola,” Cruz told the Dallas Morning News. “There’s no reason to allow ongoing commercial air traffic out of those countries.”
Last week, a group of Texas House Republicans wrote to President Obama urging such a ban "until the Ebola epidemic in West Africa has significantly subsided or ended."
They join a separate group of 27 House lawmakers who penned a similar letter to Obama calling for immediate travel restrictions "until such countries have defeated the epidemic."
Three Democrats — Reps. Alan Grayson (Fla.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Dave Loebsack (Iowa) — were among the 27 endorsing that message.
Still, the three Democrats appear to be outliers within their party — at least so far.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said he's "pleased" with the administration's strategy of screening travelers and evaluating healthcare protocols to combat Ebola.
Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas) said that, while "tensions are high" surrounding the topic, he supports "the work the administration is doing right now" to rein in the disease.
And Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), and Mark Veasey (D-Texas) — both of whom represent parts of Dallas, where the two healthcare workers contracted Ebola while treating a Liberian man who died last week of the disease — said they also oppose a travel ban.
“It is now more important than ever to follow the advice and guidance of the medical professionals and infectious disease specialists at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) in order to prevent any additional Ebola infections," Veasey told The Hill in an email.
CDC leaders, meanwhile, remain opposed to an outright ban on travel.
“If we do things that unintentionally make it harder to get that response in, to get supplies in,” it will “become much harder to stop the outbreak at the source,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said this week.
That response hasn't sat well with some Republicans, who began Wednesday to call for Frieden's resignation.
On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subpanel on Oversight and Investigations will stage a hearing in Washington on the administration's handling of the crisis.
Frieden is among the officials scheduled to testify.
Remember every damn democrat that pushes against a travel ban!
Okay, Democrats. Take that position. You take the position, two weeks before an election, that importing more people infected with Ebola is just hunky-dory. Go ahead.
They only need to ban return travel. If the dems want to go, have at it.
The Obola Administration is full of worm excrement.
More dead Americans, means less tax dollars for them to steal. Maybe they should rethink this. Who am I kidding, they aren’t capable of having thoughts about anything other than themselves.
In fact, I nominate them to fly on the same airplane that transported the one to Cincinnati and back to Texas.
Sheila Jackson Lee, if she was not in congress would’ve had a long and satisfying career as a doorstop.
CC
Gee, what a shock. The Congressional Black Caucus is up in arms over a proposed travel ban. Can’t they put the race card down for a minute and do what’s right for the country? I guarantee if Ebola had originated or broke out in Europe or the Middle East we wouldn’t hesitate to do a ban.
Angela GreilingKeaneVerified account @agreilingkeane "Our thoughts and prayers" are with the #Ebola-stricken health workers: Obama
https://twitter.com/search?q=obama%20ebola&src=typd
Yes, I'm sure the epidemic will be confined to only those three countries and it is as incapable of crossing borders as illegal aliens are incapable of crossing ours.
But at least it is a start.
The RATS are falling in line to back 0bama and his CDC idiot Frieden.
I hope Dems get Ebola and die.
This is a lose - lose position for the Democrats.
They can let Obama take the heat for not closing the borders while demanding something be done (while not doing anything).
But by moving out front claiming there is no reason to restrict travel into this country gains them nothing, and has the potential of hurting them (and us).
Obviously not.
Can't they even think about their constituents? If ebola really gets loose in this country, the crowded black "ghettos" will become dead zombie zones. White America will be too busy to help. Strangers will be shot on sight as communities close down and consume stored goods until the epidemic dies out.
...could worsen the epidemic in those African hot spots...
So the democrats want to spread the disease around!
Send the victims to Martha’s Vineyard and Gweneth Paltrow home etc.
My comment on the Hill thread:
It’s far better to remain politically correct, at least until the deadly infections are in your own congressional district. Nothing has changed since Albert Camus wrote the novel “The Plague” before WW2. Or imagine the chamber of commerce from the town of Amity, the one that didn’t want to hear bad news about sharks. Remember, these fools literally are directing the military to respond more to GLOBAL WARMING than to the mass-beheaders of the Islamic State. And refuse to believe that the Islamic State is Islamic. They simply bend reality to their narrative. Kumbaya, hands across the water. We’d rather have more Thomas Eric Duncans fly into the USA than to offend anyone. Hello??? Are there any intelligent adults in putting range of Dear Leader Obama, EVER? Does he EVER talk to a national leader without Valerie and Michelle standing guard? We are SO scroooood.
I’m guessing this isn’t satire. It’s scary how difficult it is beginning to be to tell the difference between reality and satire.
“Our thoughts and prayers” are with the #Ebola-stricken health workers: Obama
Ironic, seeing how they’re the ones who caused the affliction.
How fast can they run?
When the real angry mob show up, they underestimate the anger at their own risk!
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