I think the final budget that came out from the congressional committee ended up cutting .5 Billion from CDC. Gotta search that, if true, would be in the neighborhood of a large pressure to cut 10% budget every year from many agencies. Overall, budget request for FY2020 was 6.59 billion USD.
I hear now that there is bi-partisan support for a couple billion USD congressional appropriation for Corona. I do not believe that congress is feeling a sense of urgency on this. If there is support on both sides and urgency, it would not take long. Congress does not fix anything by making a law or authorizing money. It takes the right individuals and teams doing the right thing, but of course, they do not work for free and they are not provided free supplies and labor. So of course congressional funding makes the difference.
Interesting that DoD got a really increased budget for new programs (some will do us well, some will only do top 10 contractors well). The 10% budget reduction pressure is real, even within DoD departments and DoD agencies, but overall, DoD got a large increase.
US Government spending is wildly inefficient. The govt has become too large and diverse for an entity to figure out and cure the inefficiencies (although the IG teams are charged with a lot of that mission) What congress and Office of Budget Management does is try to fix that by reducing the budget on the premise that the agencies will still get the mission done and have to figure out how to do it with less. That works to a degree, but you hit a point where people retire and no one can get hired on and get the years of experience of who left. After a while, you nd up worse than before. A lot of our government is getting like this.
The link to the pdf is the 2020 Budget for CDC sent to congress to chew over (and finally decided upon early 2020). I got this off the CDC website. What congress finally decides upon is usually is some large or small form different from what executive branch sends to legislative branch. Congress has the "power of the purse".
https://www.cdc.gov/budget/documents/fy2020/cdc-overview-factsheet.pdf
The pdf is a 2 page doc highlighting the major areas of fiscal allocation.
I have similar opinions of Baal of the senior leadership of our federal agencies. They are all executive branch political appointees vetted/ratified by congress and this has been so throughout my lifetime regardless of who is in whitehouse or congress. Sometimes we get someone decisive/competent, but never hope for much.
The ones who have been on top of CDC and FDA have come from industry and go back to industry and for all appearances, have supported industry. I have the same concerns of Baal of CDC and our other agencies having a coordinated, effective vision and execution. Government seems to not be able over time do what is right for the American public with any vision and continuity as who leads Government changes. That can be good and bad and we got it.
A few of my TT friends have had a spell in NIH funded research and one of them parlayed it into a USA residence further researching.
