Congress is getting vocal about the Ebola threat.
Even as the administration and health officials try to tamp down fears of a domestic outbreak — a circumstance that is widely said to be unlikely — members of both parties are making their concerns known. The first US-diagnosed case of the West African-based disease resulted in a fatality this week. More than two dozen House members hardly waited a moment longer to ask President Obama to impose a travel ban between the region plagued by the epidemic and the homeland.
“[W]e ask the State Department to impose a travel ban and restrict travel visas issued to citizens of the West African countries experiencing this epidemic, until such countries have defeated the epidemic,” a letter from the lawmakers, dated Wednesday, reads. “Such a ban should be instituted by suspending earlier-issued visas until further notice, halting the issuance of such visas, and denying entry to the nationals of such [countries] upon presentation of a passport from those countries at our ports of entry.”
The request bears no signs of partisanship. The letter observes that Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat and one of the most outspoken members of the House, made the same ask in July. 26 congresspersons — some Republicans and some Democrats — joined his call in the correspondence.
“There is an adage, ‘we must hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.’ This situation is no different,” Rep. Dennis Ross, Grayson’s Florida counterpart and a Republican, said in a statement. Ross was one of the letter’s signatories.
The Wednesday letter follows scattered requests of the administration from other members to take stronger action to mitigate the threat. The Arkansas House delegation, which includes Senate candidate Tom Cotton, sent a letter dated Monday to the president urging him “to consider and implement travel restrictions, up to and including a ban on flights from the affected countries.”
“The quality of our hospitals, as well as our talented doctors, is undoubtedly a draw for people with the means and will to come to the U.S. — sometimes because of exposure to Ebola in their own country and in spite of the risk to the health of Americans,” the representatives wrote. “But we should not let such risk go unaccounted for and the federal government must make every effort to combat this virus.”
The administration has argued that it’s already doing so. The president has announced plans to send 3,000 U.S. military personnel to West Africa, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified those who have definitely and possibly had contact with the patient who was hospitalized in Dallas.
“Every one of them will be monitored every day to see if they develop a fever, and if they do, they’ll be promptly isolated. That’s how you stop it in its tracks,” CDC director Tom Frieden said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“And that’s why we’re confident that we won’t see a large number of cases from this.”
The ramped up conversation among lawmakers comes as the first trial of an Ebola vaccine began with three health care workers in Mali, NBC News reported Thursday.
