Excuse me for the impertinence, President Trump. I have a question: Why are you cutting the federal budget by firing people at a lab that’s supposed to protect our food supply and keep animal diseases from jumping to humans?
And one follow-up: Why would you be cutting the NEW lab, the one that’s supposed to replace the old one, when it’s right on the cusp of starting work?
Wouldn’t that work allow you to shutter the old one, the less-efficient one? Wasn’t that the whole point of building that lab here in the first place?
I have a feeling I know the answer, actually. I have a feeling this is just part of a meat-cleaver approach to cutting the entire federal government, and so anybody who’s relatively new on the job is out of luck. What I’m asking about is the firing of at least 28 full-time employees since late last week at the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility.
That’s what The Mercury reported Monday, based on the say-so of a source who required anonymity to risk being fired himself. That source indicated they anticipate more firings, up to roughly 60, and went as far as to offer the assessment that the cuts would slow by at least a year the progress toward full operation at that lab.
It’s a short-sighted maneuver, in my opinion, Mr. President, one that will probably have to be reversed in order to get the lab back up to speed. Because surely you’re not going to just ditch the whole effort to safeguard the food supply and build a new and more efficient facility.
Surely you just told the Elon Musk band of hackers to lop off anybody in probationary employment status at, among others, the Department of Agriculture. Which seems politically defensible enough to get away with. As a side note, I suspect this is an unintended consequence of the bureaucratic maneuver they pulled several years ago when they handed responsibility for the lab over from the Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Agriculture.
Hard to politically defend firing people who work “defending the homeland,” whereas laying off some ag people you could write off as just clearing out the bureaucracy. Shoot, all those farm states voted red, anyway, right?
I acknowledge running the risk of homerism here, complaining about budget cuts just because my ox is getting gored. Clearly we have to cut federal government spending and raise taxes in order to balance the federal budget, sooner rather than later.
But the country — Republicans, Democrats, rural people and city folk — have agreed for quite some time we needed to update and upgrade our defense against animal-borne diseases.
Remember, this whole thing came out of the realization, post 9/11, that Al-Qaida had drawn up plans for a biological attack on America.
Once you make that decision, and you spend the money to build it and get it ready to replace the outdated one on Plum Island, just outside New York, you’d have to be pretty dumb to slow down the switchover.
And, whatever anybody says, Mr. President, we know you’re not dumb.
