According to this CNN story, the Bush Administration’s 2005 budget proposal is asking Congress to eliminate an “$8.2 million research program on how to decontaminate buildings attacked by toxins”. Now, given that in the last couple of years we’ve been faced with at least one, and possibly several, persons or groups of persons who have committed biological or bio-chemical mail attacks (which resulted in several deaths, and also several multi-million dollar clean-up efforts which dragged on for months), and also that we’re still in the middle of a global “war on terrorism”, I’m not quite following the logic of this. Eight million dollars on decontaminating buildings which have been contaminating by bio-chemical terrorist attacks (out of a total budget which will exceed 2 trillion dollars by a good bit) seems like money well spent to me. In fact, I was tempted to start this thread in the Pit, but I don’t really have the energy for a good rant right now.
And maybe there really is something I’m missing here. Do we not need to spend money researching how to decontaminate buildings because, hey, we already know how to decontaminate buildings with a few gallons of Lysol[sup]®[/sup] and plenty of elbow grease? (Try not to breath too deeply; those Lysol[sup]®[/sup] fumes are bad for the lungs.) Have the bean counters determined that it would be cheaper to just burn down any affected buildings rather than spend 8 million bucks a year researching how to decontaminate them? (Hey, we’ve been needing a new U.S. Capitol building anyway; plus, the old one is way overinsured.)
OK, seriously, is this research just a needless duplication of research that’s being done better elsewhere? Is this entire story a gross distortion of some arcane budgetary footnote that’s been spun for political reasons and/or journalistic sensationalism?
Some supporter of the administration want to try and explain this to me?