We don’t need no stinkin’ government – until we do

Here’s a little headline that popped up on my handheld device: “Ebola Vaccine Would Likely Have Been Found By Now If Not For Budget Cuts.”

It quotes Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes for Health as saying that NIH has actually been working on Ebola since 2001, and very likely would have had a cure by now if it hadn’t been for sequestration.

That’s where spending is cut across the board without regard to what’s being cut.

The Internet, of course, instantly ridiculed his statement – as if he was just now making this up. But if you go back in the archives here he is in a Senate hearing a year and a half ago, protesting the decision to classify health research as discretionary.

“Is the health of our nation discretionary? Is U.S. leadership and research discretionary? I think the average person the street would go, ‘really?!’” said Collins.

Again, that was in April of 2013. The Senators listened politely, but nothing happened.

So he finally resorted to playing his guitar on YouTube and singing, “I’m a rational guy if you know what I mean, but I wasn’t prepared for 2013. Cutting medical research makes all Americans lose.”

The director of the NIH, strumming for dollars.

Collins sang, “We could do so much, but we’re plum out of luck. I’ve got the low down sequester blues.”

I bet now Congress wishes it had thrown something in the hat.