The CDC doesn't have a funding problem, it has a mission-creep problem

Yet, if there is a money crunch, perhaps the CDC needs to rethink it’s scope. The CDC can’t afford to keep a aerial ‘bio-containment unit’ on retainer, but it does have museum, a massive staff and a lots of waste and fraud. In 2007, Senator Coburn’s office authored a 115-page report detailed how the CDC uses budget gimmicks, how it wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on junkets and elaborate digs and it pointed out the institutional failure of the agency to actually ‘control diseases’ – and this includes AIDs prevention. It’s doubtful things have gotten better.

The CDC, an agency whose primary mission was to prevent malaria and then other dangerous communicable diseases, is now spending a lot of time, energy and money worrying about how much salt you put on your steaks, how close you stand to second-hand smoke and how often you do calisthenics. Though the CDC has done an admirable job in managing the panic surrounding Ebola, it is, historically speaking, a national leader in unscientific panic mongering. You might remember when top CDC scientists declared the “epidemic” of obesity would soon be the leading contributor to preventable death in the United States? The CDC claimed it obesity deaths had risen 33 percent between 1990 and 2000. It claimed that 400,000 people would die from being overweight. It turned out these numbers were made up, and the CDC was forced to revise the estimate by a mere 1,400 percent. That hasn’t stop it for continuing to scare us about salt, sugar and anything else the Center for Science in the Public Interest (sic) is wringing its hand about these days.