Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Condemning The Trump Administration For Gutting America’s Public Health Preparedness, Weakening The U.S. Response To Hantavirus Outbreak

Washington, D.C. – Today, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spoke on the Senate floor condemning the Trump administration for gutting America’s public health preparedness programs, weakening our country’s ability to respond to the current hantavirus outbreak and urging the administration to implement Leader Schumer’s three point plan to keep Americans safe – rehire, restore, rejoin. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

We continue to pray for all American cruise ship passengers exposed to hantavirus and those who remain in quarantine. I can only imagine how distressing this experience has been.

The Trump administration’s gutting of America’s public health preparedness has made the recent hantavirus outbreak even more alarming.

We often say you don’t miss something until it’s gone, and that’s certainly true of the cruise ship inspectors, disease detectives, Port Health station staff, and other pandemic experts that Donald Trump purged without a second thought.

Cutting the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program as well as a pilot program to study the hantavirus, Trump may as well have invited the virus to our shores.

If the Trump administration wants to keep Americans safe, he should follow my plan to rehire the infectious disease experts he fired, to restore funding for the programs that protect Americans from these illnesses, and to rejoin the World Health Organization and other monitoring organizations to contain these outbreaks before they spread.

After Covid-19 struck, we knew it was a question of when – not if – the United States would face another pandemic threat.

Instead of investing in public health to meet that threat, the Trump administration has raised the white flag and lowered our defenses.

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