CDC Priorities

There is an interesting byplay going on in Congress as it limps into a Christmas break. Much of it indirectly involves the Centers of Disease Control in Atlanta. It turns out they are building a $60 million tourist center. This is to be a big, glitzy facility with Japanese Gardens, waterfalls, and fountains with features such infectious disease related things such as rats, monkeys, a giant mosquito and so forth. In order to get this through Congress, the disease fighters in Atlanta propose naming the buildings after two sitting Senators who are funneling money their way--Harkin (Democrat) and Specter (Republican). The House of Representatives is objecting to the naming of the buildings after sitting politicians and have countered that the buildings be named after Mother Teresa and Rosa Parks. I find that amusing, but what is not amusing is that none of the politicians are against building the tourist center in the first place.
My favorite Senator, Coburn of Oklahoma, has discovered that there is $210 million of unspent construction money in their $1.5 billion budget that has not been spent. They also have $68 million each year in the HHS budget (of which the CDC is a part) that Coburn thinks could be better used to fight diseases. He probably won't get far, however, since he previously tried to shift some of the CDC construction budget to fight AIDS and it lost by a vote of 85-14 in the Senate.