House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said Sunday that state governors imposing mandatory quarantines on healthcare workers returning from Africa are reacting to a lack of leadership by the Obama administration on the matter of Ebola.
“Governors of both parties are reacting to [an] absence of leadership and absence of belief that the federal government really does know what they’re doing,” Issa said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The Republican congressman said that his committee’s hearings have demonstrated that people without symptoms of Ebola do not need to be quarantined, but that past misstatements by federal crisis coordinators have decreased confidence in the administration.
“Trust matters,” said Issa.
“This is about public confidence. The way you restore public confidence is first you have leadership,” the Californian added.
Referencing the public’s trust in the military, he said that he would rather have a four-star general coordinating the Ebola response than President Obama’s designated coordinators.
To replace the mandatory quarantine for aid workers returning from Africa that governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie have imposed, Issa proposed continuous monitoring of workers’ temperatures to quarantine them as soon as spikes are noticed.
Health workers can’t be discouraged from going to Africa to fight Ebola, Issa said. “We’ve got to get it at the source,” explained, “just as the global war on terror is fighting [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] outside of Baghdad.”
The White House can regain trust by opening up witnesses to congressional committees, Issa suggested. “If Congress then makes the decision with the president that we’re doing the right thing, then confidence will be restored” in policies that don’t involve quarantines or other measures that might discourage workers from addressing Ebola in Africa, Issa said.
