Bush Delays Action on Flu Risk

With recent news that Bush failed to take seriously warnings about the risk of civil war in Iraq or Katrina, Democrats now fear that Bush is doing enough about the risk of an influenza pandemic which many have been warning about. The New York Times reports:

The Bush administration announced Tuesday that it was buying enough antiviral drugs to treat 14 million people in the event of a pandemic flu, but Democrats said that the administration had yet to spend all of the money that Congress appropriated in December to buy drugs, and that the delay was putting people at risk. . .

“Despite the urgency and the need in the event of an avian flu pandemic, the administration is slow-walking the much-needed dollars because of their overall budget problems,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said. “That is wrong.”