Rand Paul: Obama and CDC Failing To Show Leadership On Ebola Outbreak

Senator Rand Paul has accused Barack Obama of downplaying the threat posed by Ebola for political purposes, alleging that the President has “failed to show leadership” on the issue.

In an interview this morning with Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, the Kentucky Senator was asked by host Dom Giordano if the Ebola outbreak was morphing into an issue of incompetence and the White House “lying to the American people.”

“It adds to just a litany of things that the President has let us down on and failed to show leadership,” responded Paul. “So, I think it’s one thing after another, it’s not just one issue. The lack of leadership on Ebola, the equivocating, the downplaying, the underplaying, the, sort of, trying to calm everyone with really not being completely frank about the transmissibility of the disease, I think, doesn’t help any of them at the polls.”

The Senator attacked suggestions made by some on the left that budget cuts had left health authorities unprepared to deal with an Ebola outbreak in the United States.

“The waste that runs throughout [The National Institute of Health] is just appalling and for them to say they didn’t have enough money when their budget has gone up 220 percent for epidemics is really just an insult to the taxpayer,” said Paul.

This is not the first time Senator Paul has been vocal in his condemnation of the federal government’s reaction to the Ebola crisis.

Earlier this month, Paul appeared on the Laura Ingraham Show to complain that the situation was not being treated with enough seriousness, highlighting comments made before the first case in Dallas by CDC officials who said there was little chance of an outbreak occurring within the United States.

“I really think that it is being dominated by political correctness and I think because of political correctness we’re not really making sound, rational, scientific decisions on this,” said Paul, while suggesting that the transmissibility of the virus may be more aggressive than health authorities have acknowledged.

Two health workers who treated patient zero – Thomas Eric Duncan – have contracted the virus despite wearing full protective clothing, prompting questions as to whether the virus has gone airborne to some degree.