Avian Flu & the Smell of Pork

In a speech at the National Institutes of Health yesterday, President Bush proposed a $7.1 billion plan to protect the United States against an avian flu pandemic. In its story on the president's proposal, the San Francisco Chronicle had a pie-chart breakdown of the funding proposal. In light of the recent pork-laden transportation bill (anybody remember the Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere?), I was worried by one wedge of the pie chart which read $1.1 billion for "other spending". Is it just me, or does this have the nauseating odor of federal pork-barrel spending about it? Where is Bill Proxmire and his Golden Fleece Award when we need him? Don't get me wrong: If the avian (bird) flu mutates and makes the leap from bird-to-human transmission to human-to-human transmission, we could well have a pandemic crisis on our hands that will make the 1918 flu outbreak look like a day at Disneyland. We need to be prepared at all levels of government, as well as individually. But using the threat of an avian flu pandemic as an excuse to once again waddle up to the federal trough accomplishes nothing, and could well interfere with legitimate federal efforts to address the avian flu. Not much to link to in the blogworld on the president's proposal - seems like all the focus (very understandably) is on the Alito nomination.