By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
On Friday, October 17, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R from Alabama) released a statement that was highly critical of the President’s selection of Ron Klain to be his Ebola czar.
Senator Sessions said, “Ebola is a health crisis. Yet the President has appointed as his new Ebola czar a partisan loyalist whose expertise is politics—not health. One would think, faced with the prospect of an epidemic, the President would task an expert in epidemiology not an expert in political spin. Sound bites are not going to deter a single infection or save a single life. The American people can have zero confidence in Ron Klain’s competence to carry out this critical role.”
Ron Klain has held a number of posts in the federal government including chief of staff for both Vice President’s Joe Biden and Al Gore. He is best known to the American people as the Democrat tasked to head Al Gore’s team in the Florida recount. He was played by the actor, Kevin Spacey in the heavily fictionalized HBO movie, “Recount.”
Sen. Sessions continued, “At the senior levels of this government, in positions of extraordinary responsibility, the President has surrounded himself with loyalists—individuals who were selected precisely because they are not independent, will not tell the President ‘no’, and will not have any problem in feeding bogus political spin to the media.”
Sen. Sessions said, “The President’s Director of Health and Human Services, Sylvia Burwell, was promoted after refusing to answer even those most basic financial questions from Congress during her dismal tenure at the Office of Management and Budget. Burwell, a former campaign operative, was tasked with overseeing the nation’s healthcare system despite no consequential health care experience. Secretary Jeh Johnson was chosen to head the one of the largest and most important departments of government despite being a political lawyer with no relevant background. Johnson has devoted his short tenure not to strengthening enforcement but dismantling it. Just today—as American citizens face a jobs crisis, debt crisis, border crisis, security crisis, and now a health crisis—Secretary Johnson announced actions not to restore gutted enforcement, but further steps to open our borders. DHS is now extending what amounts to a perpetual amnesty to thousands of immigrants from Honduras and Nicaragua, while expediting immigration from Haiti at a time when we can’t keep track of the millions we are already admitting.”
Sen. Sessions joined the chorus of Republicans demanding that travel visas from Ebola infected countries be stopped. Sen. Sessions said, “The danger at this moment is profound. We need to be barring visas and travel from Ebola-impacted regions. Additionally, should there be an outbreak in Latin America, General John Kelly of SOUTHCOM has warned that it would cause a ‘mass migration’ from Latin America of those seeking free medical treatment in the United States. ‘If it breaks out, it’s literally Katie bar the door,’ he warned. Does anyone believe that this Administration is prepared to protect this country from such a scenario? The Administration continues to refuse to implement even the most commonsense immigration controls to protect public health and public tax dollars. Mr. Klain’s appointment, unfortunately, suggests things will get worse—not better.”
Ebola has the potential, if it is not rapidly contained, of possibly being the largest crisis in the world since the AIDS epidemic (coincidentally another virus from out of Africa). As of October 15 there have been 8997 suspected cases of Ebola in this outbreak (including two Dallas area nurses), which is by far the largest in the know history of the illness. Of those 5006 have been confirmed as Ebola by laboratory work.
To this point, of those known cases 4493 people have died including Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national who died in Dallas 12 days ago after arriving in America on commercial aviation. Nurses Amber Joy Vinson (29) and Nina Pham (26) became infected with the virus while treating Mr. Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
The policy director for the Center for Immigration Studies, Jessica Vaughan told Neil Munroe with the “Daily Caller” that up to 190,000 West Africans come to the United States every year. Vaughan said that is, “An enormous amount of people coming in and out, but the administration is insisting that it would be counterproductive to stop this flow of people.” The Center for Immigration Studies seeks a reduction in the annual inflow of one million immigrants and 700,000 guest workers that come to the United States each year.
Sen. Jeff Sessions is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is a Senior Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
