Video: Swine Flu Update – Sebelius, Napolitano, Besser on Meet the Press

Transcript: White House Briefing on Swine Flu

(Source: White House Press Office)
White House Press Briefing – Swine Flu – April 26, 2009
Janet Naplolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security
John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security
Dr. Richard Besser, Acting Director, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
Robert Gibbs, Press Secretary
12:34 P.M. EDT
MR. GIBBS: Good afternoon, guys. Thank you for taking some time out of your Sunday afternoon. We wanted to bring together many of the people that have the primary governmental responsibility in dealing with the situation and to discuss the government’s capacity and capability to discuss the steps the government is taking to address this.

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Swine Flu Update – Sunday, April 26

• U.S. declares public health emergency over Swine Flu – New York Times

Governments around the world stepped up their response to the outbreak, racing to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases from New Zealand to Hong Kong to Spain, raising concerns about the potential for a global pandemic.

Canada also confirmed six cases of the flu on Sunday, all of them linked to people who had traveled to Mexico.

• U.S. acts swiftly to contain flu outbreak – Reuters

Health and Homeland Security officials announced steps to release some of the country’s stockpiles of anti-flu drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza. They recommended that local authorities plan for possible school closures and for people with flu-like symptoms to stay at home to reduce the possibility of transmission.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said it was too early to say what impact the outbreak could have on efforts to get the economy back on its feet. Spiraling health-care costs are already a huge drain on the economy.

• Fears of Swine Flu pandemic increase – Washington Post

“As we continue to look for cases, we are going to see a broader spectrum of disease,” predicted Dr. Richard Besser, acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We’re going to see more severe disease in this country.”

At a White House news conference, Besser and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sought to assure Americans that health officials are taking all appropriate steps to minimize the impact of the outbreak.

Top among those is declaring the public health emergency. As part of that, Napolitano said roughly 12 million doses of the drug Tamiflu will be moved from a federal stockpile to places where states can quickly get their share if they decide they need it. Priority will be given to the five states with known cases so far: California, Texas, New York, Ohio and Kansas.

• Virus is ‘gene reassortment’ – BBC

Text: President Obama Weekly Address, April 18, 2009 – Are Taxpayers Getting Their Money’s Worth?

(Source: White House Press Office)

It’s not news to say that we are living through challenging times: The worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.  A credit crisis that has made that downturn worse.  And a fiscal disaster that has accumulated over a period of years.

In the year 2000, we had projected budget surpluses in the trillions, and Washington appeared to be on the road to fiscal stability.  Eight years later, when I walked in the door, the projected budget deficit for this year alone was $1.3 trillion.  And in order to jumpstart our struggling economy, we were forced to make investments that added to that deficit through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

But as surely as our future depends on building a new energy economy, controlling health care costs and ensuring that our kids are once again the best educated in the world, it also depends on restoring a sense of responsibility and accountability to our federal budget.  Without significant change to steer away from ever-expanding deficits and debt, we are on an unsustainable course.

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Govt. Waste: Obama Calls Out Dept. of Homeland Security’s Millions for Logos

I’m reading President Barack Obama’s weekly address to be released tomorrow and he actually puts some meat on the bone of what is meant by government waste.

In this excerpt he lauds Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for ending millions in contracts for the development of “seals and logos.”

And this Monday, at my first, full Cabinet meeting, I will ask all of my department and agency heads for specific proposals for cutting their budgets.  Already, members of my Cabinet have begun to trim back unnecessary expenditures.  Secretary Napolitano, for example, is ending consulting contracts to create new seals and logos that have cost the Department of Homeland Security $3 million since 2003.

You’ve got to be kidding me.  Isn’t most of the Homeland Security department made up of programs and agencies that were pre-existing?  Didn’t they already have logos?  I can just hear the marketing consultants when the behemoth DHS was created: We’ve got to build the brand!  Let me tell you, from experience, it shouldn’t have taken $3 million over the last six years to build a brand at DHS.

I got to wondering if the media had covered this boondoggle and hats off to the Washington Times - something you won’t hear from me very often.  Back on April 1, the Times reported on a memo sent by Napolitano to the management at DHS regarding her cost-cutting measures.  The contracts for the logo creators was apparently axed at that time.  According to the Times, Napolitano wrote her colleagues:

“Finally,” the secretary writes to the myriad agencies that now fall beneath the DHS umbrella, “in the interest of cost containment and unifying the department, I enacted a moratorium on all external contracts for the design and production of new seals and logos. Let me be clear – many DHS components have long histories that are linked to their seals. We are proud of this heritage and thankful for their service. But we’re also stewards of taxpayer dollars and we’re not spending any more money to develop new logos.”