Liberal group blames Ebola outbreak on budget cuts

Spending cut problem or spending priority problem?

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LIBERAL GROUP LAUNCHES AD BLAMING EBOLA OUTBREAK ON GOP AND BUDGET CUTS

JOHN TAMNY: If Ebola is the big risk the people say it is, you want to slash federal spending, and you want to do that because you want to leave as much money as possible in the private sector of what we'll find innovators in search of a cure. The reality is that innovators like Thomas Edison do not work for the federal government, so it seems foolhardy to think we should fund more of their waste on a way to a cure.

BILL BALDWIN: Definitely spend more money. The budget of the CDC has in fact more than doubled in real terms, that's after inflation, since the turn of the century, but you can also say the same thing about spending on combating terrorism. The harsh truth is that if we want to stop either pandemics or terrorists were going to have to post sentries on every corner of the globe, were going to have to spend a lot of money developing new technologies.

ELIZABETH MACDONALD: There's no shortage of funds there's a shortage of common sense and back bone, and we've seen that time to time again. The CDC's part of health and human services, that budget is up more than nine times since the 70's. They get more than 900 billion dollars and all sorts of assistant secretaries who actually can be Ebola Czars there too.

RICK UNGAR: I saw the ad, I thought the ad was ridiculous, but let's be honest everybody, it's both sides who are playing this absolutely inappropriate, stupid blame game. I got to say to John Tamny's point though, it is deeply flawed, simply because thank god Ebola does not come along in the world enough to motivate a drug company, a private industry, to make the investment to find the cures you're saying. You do need government.

RICH KARLGAARD: I agree that most wives and husbands too, if you gave them 325,000 dollars, they would feel a lot better. These are small, relatively trivial; they're easy to make fun of. The larger issue here is the one that E-Mac pointed to on what basis should we have any faith either in the CDC or the administration to manage this? They make the most ridiculous statements. Tom Frieden, of the CDC, who heads the CDC, can't even decide whether it safe to ride on a bus or not. I mean these are the things they're struggling with while this Ebola threatens to break out.

DEFENSE DEPARTMENT DECLARES CLIMATE CHANGE AN IMMEDIATE THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY

MIKE OZANIAN: Hagel is simply pushing the president's far-left agenda. This is the same agenda that went out and said Al Qaeda has been decimated. No, that's not true. ISIS is the JV team? No, that's not true. Same thing with this. It's simply not the government's job to use the military to combat climate change.

RICK UNGAR: I don't really believe that this is a national security problem in the next few years. However, if, and I'm underlining the word if so we don't have to have that debate. If you believe that there's climate change taking place whether naturally or man-made, then it's not that hard to see how that does translate into situations that would in fact be a problem for our national security.

RICH KARLGAARD: The immediate risk is that the democrats are going to lose the senate, and the only hope they have of keeping the senate is to rally the base. So what this is all about is rallying the base, and Chuck Hagel should be ashamed of himself. He was once an independent republican and now he's a puppet for a desperate administration.

SABRINA SCHAEFFER: Rich took the words right out of my mouth. The reality is we have midterm elections less than a month away and most Americans are no favoring the GOP when it comes to foreign affairs. Well if you're not leading on Ebola, and you're not leading on Isis, you have to find something to lead on, and democrats want to take the climate change portfolio to the American people. But this is simply alarmism that's run-a-muck, it's terrible and it's insulting to American voters.

JOHN TAMNY: I think this speaks to a bureaucrat desperately in search of a mission, and it should scare people regardless of their views on global warming. The U.S military exists to protect us from foreign intruders and if it's going to get into science that also means it's going to get into things that put our troops in harm's way. We've got to streamline their mission preciously because we want to be safer. This is dangerous.

QUESTIONS RAISED OVER SAUDIS' MOTIVE AS IT PUMPS MORE OIL AND DRIVES DOWN PRICES

RICH KARLGAARD: If you look at the shale oil boom, they're not profitable unless oil is over 70 dollars per barrel because it's very expensive, the horizontal drilling and the fracking, to go that far down and get it. But look, if it happens this is good for everybody else, because low oil prices and low gasoline prices is just what the global economy and the U.S economy need right now.

ELIZABETH MACDONALD: It's more expensive to pull oil out via fracking than it is for Saudi Arabia, the central bank of oil. So the Saudis have what? Three quarter of a trillion in reserves? They can stomach a 10 billion, 20 billion hit if oil prices go down.

BILL BALDWIN: The Saudis are just doing what you'd expect a competitor to do which is to grab at the business. They lost to Rich Karlgaard friends in North Dakota. But I don't see this is a bad thing anymore than Rich Karlgaard does. I think it's quite expected that this will help the economy.

MIKE OZANIAN: The price of oil has fallen primarily because the dollar has gotten stronger. It's not going to hurt the real profitable area of U.S production of oil which is not going to be from fracking, but is going to be from the Atlantic continental shelf. There, even with prices at current levels, or even significantly lower, that's still going to be very profitable for U.S producers.

SABRINA SCAEFFER: I'm a big supporter of fracking. The bigger issue though is that this is actually good news because it means that competition means it's going to be better prices for the consumer, better prices for business, economic growth all around. The fact is that Saudis' do have something to be worried about. The United States has surpassed them in oil extractions and that is making things tougher for them. But I think the fracking industry, natural gas, there here for the long-term; we don't have to worry about that.