Many of the Obama administration’s “scandals” have been failures of competence. The Secret Service let a man leap over the White House fence and get into the White House. The Veterans Health Administration covered up unconscionable delays in treating veterans. The error-ridden rollout of the Obamacare website was a nightmare for people trying to sign up for health insurance. The Republican right takes it as an article of faith that the national government can’t do anything right. Problems like these only help promote that idea.Too right, they do. This is the biggest collection of own-foot-shooters in many a year, they make the Bushies look pretty good. Nocera summarizes:
The Ebola outbreak is not exactly enhancing the C.D.C.'s reputation for competence.Dang, I do love ironic understatement. Then Nocera looks at why the problem exists and finds the agency blames the sequestration budget cuts. Let me tell you about government agencies and budget cuts, learned while spending two years consulting with the headquarters unit of a federal agency with 10,000 employees.
When a federal agency's budget is cut they don't look for non-essential functions to cut back, that would make their lives harder and less rewarding. They look for ways to deliver perceptibly less of whatever it is the public - taxpayers - expect them to accomplish.
The agency mantra is this: if you cut our budget, we will do our level best to make it hurt you more than it hurts us. You have to wonder how many of us need to die from Ebola before CDC thinks we've been punished enough for cutting their budget?
