Emergency Hill hearings on swine flu
Posted on Monday, April 27 @ 21:52:11 EDT
Topic: Diseases Biohazards illegal immigration
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 ALIPAC NOTE: Thank you to all the ALIPAC supporters that have called Washington today demanding hearings.
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Congressional lawmakers moved quickly Monday to
investigate the spread of the deadly strain of swine flu in Mexico and
the United States, calling for emergency hearings to review the federal
government’s response.
The hearings, scheduled for later this week, come on the heels of a
day of rapid response as the State Department issued a travel alert for
Mexico and the World Health Organization raised the global pandemic
warning level.
Subjects, Open Borders, Congress, Senate, hearings, Mexican Swine Flu, refusal to close the borders, Napolitano says it would cost money
By Reid Wilson
Posted: 04/27/09
The Hill
So far, the H1N1 virus, which originated in
Mexico and is transmittable between humans, has killed more than 150
people south of the border. More than 40 people in the United States
have been infected by the disease, officials said.
The State Department said it would close most nonessential
operations at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City until Thursday. Though no
formal warnings have been issued, spokesman Robert Wood said the U.S.
is “prepared to take additional measures should they be necessary.”
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers were quick to call for public hearings into the epidemic.
Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), chairman of the Energy and
Commerce Subcommittee on Health, set a hearing for Thursday that will
address the health emergency declaration.
Pallone’s hearing will seek “to make sure that the health agencies,
both federal as well as state and local, have enough resources to deal
with the potential problem of this swine flu outbreak,” he told The
Hill.
Pallone said appropriating more money for the response, if federal agencies need additional people and resources, is possible.
Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced
Monday that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acting director Richard Besser
will be the star witnesses at a Wednesday hearing on the outbreak. The
Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing is
aimed at exploring how the government can best coordinate the response
to the epidemic.
Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is using the emergency to call for additional funding for pandemic preparedness.
“The [CDC] has been able to prepare for the ‘swine flu’ outbreak by
stockpiling antivirals, improving surveillance and lab capacity and
providing for quarantines if needed because every supplemental spending
bill in the last four years has included funding,” Harkin said in a
statement. “The spending bill currently traveling through Congress
should again ensure the CDC has the resources it needs.”
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.), long
an advocate for increased funding for pandemic preparations, said in a
statement Monday that the epidemic in Mexico is a wakeup call.
“Whether or not this influenza strain turns out to have pandemic
potential, sooner or later some strain will,” Obey said. “We are not
prepared today. Let’s hope we don’t need to be. Because we need to
become prepared as soon as possible, I intend to again request
additional funds in the upcoming supplemental.”
Early Monday, Napolitano said the State Department was considering
a travel advisory, while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said
later the department was simply “urging caution.
A State Department spokesman said the travel alert — an official
statement that does not rise to the level of a formal warning — extends
to cautioning Americans to avoid large gatherings in Mexico.
Domestically, the federal government issued a national public
health emergency Sunday, though Napolitano insisted the declaration was
a formality that allowed the government to free up money and release
stockpiled flu medicine.
President Obama said the spread of the disease, which public health
officials said is likely to grow, is cause for heightened awareness but
not alarm.
“We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the
United States. This is obviously a cause for concern and requires a
heightened state of alert. But it is not a cause for alarm,” Obama said
Monday in an address to the National Academy of Sciences.
Later Monday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told
reporters that Obama’s health is sound after visiting Mexico two weeks
ago.
“The president’s health was never in danger. The president nor
anybody that I know of traveling with him in either governmental or
press capacity has shown any symptoms that would denote cause for any
concern,” Gibbs said.
In recent months, several members of Congress and top
administration officials have traveled through Mexico on official
business. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.),
Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and
Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) all visited
in March, while Clinton, Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder
have all stopped in the country as well.
The H1N1 virus has an incubation period of between 24 and 48 hours,
meaning the U.S. officials who have visited would have exhibited
symptoms long ago had they been infected.
Obama is receiving constantly updated briefings on the situation.
In an effort to get information to the public quickly, the CDC,
Napolitano and White House deputy national security adviser John
Brennan will offer daily press briefings
The epidemic has also raised concerns that an association between
the flu and swine could scare consumers away from buying pork products.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack took the opportunity Monday to assure
consumers that the U.S. food supply is safe.
“There is no evidence at this time that U.S. swine have been
infected with this virus,” Vilsack said. “Our pork and pork products
are safe. The discovery of this virus in humans is not a basis for
restricting imports of commercially produced U.S. pork and pork
products.”
Napolitano said closing the border with Mexico, as some have
recommended, would not help, given the speed with which the disease has
spread. Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) on Saturday became the first member of
Congress to call for halting travel between the two countries.
“Closing the border is something one would do if one had a
realistic hope of containment, but given that we already have outbreaks
in at least five states and probably more, and in at least two
provinces in Canada, that really wouldn’t make sense,” Napolitano said.
“And, of course, closing the border is not only complicated but
would really cost millions of dollars in terms of trading commerce. So
that, right now, is not something that we are looking at.”
Health officials have said the H1N1 strain of swine flu is amenable
to common anti-flu drugs like Tamiflu. The officials said the U.S. will
release a quarter of the 50 million doses of the drug it holds in
reserve in hopes of containing the disease.
But the disease can spread even to those who received flu vaccines
this year, according to the CDC’s Besser. Besser said public officials
in Texas and New York, where swine flu cases have been confirmed, acted
appropriately in shutting down schools in order to contain the spread.
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