Sen. Marco Rubio argued that President Obama needs to step up the fight against Ebola.
Preventing the spread of the disease will be a challenge “made more difficult because many Americans lack confidence in our government’s ability to effectively confront crises like this one,” the Florida Republican wrote in a CNN op-ed Thursday.
The likely 2016 Republican contender argued that the first step is for the administration to assure Americans that someone is in charge of confronting and stopping the epidemic.
He wrote, “inexcusably, this has not really happened.”
Tackling the problem in West Africa should be the administration’s next move, Rubio wrote. Doing this at the source of the disease is not only “the right thing to do for humanitarian reasons, but it’s also essential to protecting the American people.”
Most importantly, the State Department should “institute a temporary ban on new visas to non-U.S. nationals seeking to travel to the United States from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea,” according to Rubio.
Preventing mass travel from affected countries will prevent the crisis from growing not only within Africa, but in the United States as well, he says.
“A sick child in Africa has advanced into a global health security issue that is now knocking on America’s door,” Rubio concluded.
