Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s News HQ,” Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) said, “maybe the protocols aren’t enough,” in light of a Texas nurse testing positive for Ebola, which would be the first transmission within the United States.
The congressman called for suspending the visas of those who are traveling from West Africa and beefing up airport screening.
“I’m also concerned we’re not doing enough with respect to screening,” he said. “We’ve got airport scening at some airports but not all. Why don’t we funnel everybody coming from West Africa through airports with screening or put the screening in every airport. My fear is this is worse than folks think and I don’t think we can be too careful even if it isn’t. I don’t think it’s time for panic. I think it is time for a cautious dose of concern.”
Farenthold explained his concern is also peaked because during the CDC’s field hearing this week “the most troubling” thing he learned was, “You saw the CDC pointing fingers at Customs and Border Patrol and Customs and Border Patrol pointing fingers at the State Department. There’s nobody in the government that I’ve been able to identify where the buck stops. Under the Bush administration, the president had a special advisor for bio issues. That position was eliminated under Obama. My fear is that if this gets bad we’re going to have one agency pointing the finger at another agency in just a bureaucratic game of dodge ball. That’s not what we need. We need somebody focused on solutions, focused on learning from every case and learning from every mistake and learning from every success.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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