More money, fewer problems.
Or so Democrats, their incompetent government appointees and liberal media supporters would have you believe.
Greeted with vast evidence of corruption, stupidity or both in the federal government, cries for greater funding and complaints about budget cuts and sequestration inevitably follow from the Left.
A new ad Monday from"The Agenda Project" presents a montage of various Republicans talking about spending cuts spliced with scenes of the Ebola epidemic, complete with hazmat suits and dead bodies. The implication is super serious: Republicans and their incessant need to cut waste have allowed Ebola to spread and flourish. "The Agenda Project," it should be noted, has also created an ad showing Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) dumping Grandma off a cliff, so shrill partisanship is more their thing than subtle policy critiques.
This ad, as Hot Air's Noah Rothman pointed out, coincided rather nicely with a Sunday night Huffington Post report where the head of the National Institutes of Health claimed it would have already found a vaccine for Ebola if not for a "10-year slide in research support." The Internet responded with many examples of ludicrous spending projects by the NIH, such as nearly $1 million on finding out why fruit flies fall in love. Allocation of funding seems to be the department's real problem, like so many others in the federal government.
Sens. Bob Casey (D., Penn.) and Patty Murray (D., Wash.) also partially blamed sequestration in recent comments on the outbreak.
Sound familiar? After reports of severe breaches of White House security that threatened President Obama and the First Family, former Secret Service director Julia Pierson said she was working at 550 employees below "optimal level" due to sequestration. The comment was prompted by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D., D.C.), who said Congress "has to take some responsibility" for the Secret Service's problems. They were more than problems, though. Bullets hitting the White House and a man leaping the fence and making it untouched to the East Room were, among others, significant security lapses that rightly left the President and First Lady furious.
Several Democrats pointed their finger at Republicans and budget cuts after the security failures surrounding the Benghazi terrorist attack. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), for her part, said, "Who cut the funds for embassy security? The Republicans in the House!"
One liberal even tried to use that excuse for the scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which stirred nationwide outrage this year after revelations of secret waiting lists and endless wait times for vets seeking lifesaving care.
"Congress has cut funding, has slashed funding, for veterans' benefits over these last years," said The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel. "If anyone should be offering their resignation, maybe the Congress should."
She later acknowledged she spoke in error.
A host of Democrats, many of whom with financial ties to the left-leaning National Treasury Employees Union, used their time questioning new IRS commissioner John Koskinen in June to advocate for more money for the agency. This, amazingly, was during an investigation into mysteriously missing emails from former tax-exempt director Lois Lerner that were lost in a "crash" in 2011, part of a larger probe into the conservative targeting scandal that first came to light in 2013.
But give these folks more money, and everything should be just fine. For example, the famously successful and high-functioning Obamacare website has cost about $2 billion to date.