Top officials at the Centers for Disease Control recieved $25 million in bonuses over the last 7 years, giving the lie to the notion that GOP budget cuts at the $6 billion agency are responsible for the Ebola outbreak.

Another $40 million in CDC funding has gone to study silly "health" issues like why are lesbians fat and origami condoms.

Washington Times:

U.S. taxpayers gave $6 billion in salaries and $25 million in bonuses to an elite corps of health care specialists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 2007, according to data compiled by American Transparency’s OpenTheBooks.com, an online portal aggregating 1.3 billion lines of federal, state and local spending. The agency’s head count increased by 23 percent during that time, adding manpower and contributing to higher payrolls despite relatively flat funding.

From 2010 to 2013, all federal wages were frozen because of budgetary constraints, but CDC officials found a way to pay themselves through bonuses, overtime, within-grade increases and promotion pay raises.

Donald Shriber, deputy director of policy and communication at the CDC’s Center for Global Health, received the highest bonus in the six years analyzed — $62,895 in 2011 — netting $242,595 in take-home pay in a year when wages were supposed to be frozen.

Mr. Shriber was one of 54 employees governmentwide, and one of four in the Department of Health and Human Services, recognized with the Presidential Rank Award for his leadership abilities that year, which accounted for the bonus, said Donda Hansen, a media representative for the CDC.

Kathleen Dunlap, deputy budget director at the CDC, was awarded a $8,000 bonus last year — the highest among her fellow employees. Ms. Dunlap didn’t respond to a request for comment.

For using budgetary constraints as an excuse for its handling of Ebola while pocketing taxpayer-funded salaries and bonuses, the CDC wins this week’s Golden Hammer award, a distinction given by The Washington Times to highlight waste, fraud and abuse of tax dollars.

As we discovered during the battles over sequestration cuts, federal managers will manipulate their budgets to inflict the most amount of pain by cutting popular programs rather than wasteful and unnecessary spending. Bottom line: They fail to prioritize spending.

Washington Free Beacon:

“Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready,” said NIH Director Francis Collins, blaming budget cuts for his agency’s failure to develop a vaccine for the deadly virus.

However, the Washington Free Beacon has uncovered $39,643,352 worth of NIH studies within the past several years that have gone to questionable research.

For instance, the agency has spent $2,873,440 trying to figure out why lesbians are obese, and $466,642 on why fat girls have a tough time getting dates. Another $2,075,611 was spent encouraging old people to join choirs.

Millions have gone to “text message interventions,” including a study where researchers sent texts to drunks at the bar to try to get them to stop drinking. The project received an additional grant this year, for a total of $674,590.

The NIH is also texting older African Americans with HIV ($372,460), HIV and drug users in rural areas ($693,000), HIV smokers ($763,519), pregnant smokers ($380,145), teen moms ($243,839), and meth addicts ($360,113). Text message interventions to try to get obese people to lose weight have cost $2,707,067.

The NIH’s research on obesity has led to spending $2,101,064 on wearable insoles and buttons that can track a person’s weight, and $374,670 to put on fruit and vegetable puppet shows for preschoolers.

A restaurant intervention to develop new children’s menus cost $275,227, and the NIH spent $430,608 for mother-daughter dancing outreach to fight obesity.

I guess it's politically incorrect to blame fat lesbians or drunks for the Ebola outbreak so obviously, Republicans fill the bill.

Whether it's bureaiucrats at HHS, CDC, the Pentagon, or the Department of Education, the culture encourages waste, while discouraging sound principles in spending tax money. The most rudimentary efforts to prioritize spending are missing when bonuses and frivilous projects take precedence over developing a vaccine for a deadly disease.