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Source: Wine Press
Having kicked the can down the road once again, like clockwork, Washington’s politicians are scurrying around like ants to throw together a spending package that kicks the can down the road even further, by suspending the debt ceiling, giving the federal government more funding, and slipping in a myriad of items that hardly if anyone had a chance to read.
GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson introduced a 1,547-page continuing resolution (CR) spending package on December 17th, called the American Relief Act of 2024 – a bill that is worth hundreds of billions of dollars in funding. Today is the final day it must pass, lest there be a government shutdown.
Per usual, there are debates on all sides demanding that certain things be added in or taken out. Incoming President Donald Trump and soon-to-be Vice President JD Vance got involved to apparently get the ball rolling.
Eventually a deal was reached. On Truth Social, Trump described the package as “a very good deal for the American People,” and praised the debt ceiling being suspended once again until 2027.
Trump has even suggested that the debt ceiling should be scrapped entirely, allowing the federal government to borrow without any parameters.
In a phone interview with CBS, Trump told the network: “Number one, the debt ceiling should be thrown out entirely. Number two, a lot of the different things they thought they’d receive [in a recently proposed spending deal] are now going to be thrown out, 100%. And we’ll see what happens. We’ll see whether or not we have a closure during the Biden administration. But if it’s going to take place, it’s going to take place during Biden, not during Trump.”
According to Breitbart, ‘The new spending deal includes a three-month clean extension of current spending levels, a one-year farm bill extension, $110 billion in disaster aid, and – as Trump requested – a two-year suspension of the debt limit until January 2027.’
The conservative outlet added, however, ‘Most of the pork in the bill was stripped, much to the consternation of Washington’s lobbyists.’'
But notwithstanding, an intriguing chunk of the new bill contains a large section titled, “PANDEMIC AND ALL-HAZARDS PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE.” The different subsections include:
Sec. 601. Short title.
Subtitle A—State and Local Readiness and Response
Sec. 611. Temporary reassignment of State and local personnel during a publichealth emergency.
Sec. 612. Public Health Emergency Preparedness program.
Sec. 613. Hospital Preparedness Program.
Sec. 614. Facilities and capacities of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to combat public health security threats.
Sec. 615. Pilot program to support State medical stockpiles.
Sec. 616. Enhancing domestic wastewater surveillance for pathogen detection.
Sec. 617. Reauthorization of Mosquito Abatement for Safety and Health program.
Subtitle B—Federal Planning and Coordination
Sec. 621. All-Hazards Emergency Preparedness and Response.
Sec. 622. National Health Security Strategy.
Sec. 623. Improving development and distribution of diagnostic tests.
Sec. 624. Combating antimicrobial resistance.
Sec. 625. Strategic National Stockpile and material threats.
Sec. 626. Medical countermeasures for viral threats with pandemic potential.
Sec. 627. Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise.
Sec. 628. Fellowship and training programs.
Sec. 629. Regional biocontainment research laboratories.
Sec. 629A. Limitation related to countries of concern conducting certain research.
Subtitle C—Addressing the Needs of All Individuals
Sec. 631. Improving access to certain programs.
Sec. 632. Supporting at-risk individuals during emergency responses.
Sec. 633. National advisory committees.
Sec. 634. National Academies study on prizes.
Subtitle D—Additional Reauthorizations
Sec. 641. Medical countermeasure priority review voucher.
Sec. 642. Epidemic Intelligence Service.
Sec. 643. Monitoring and distribution of certain medical countermeasures.
Sec. 644. Regional health care emergency preparedness and response systems.
Sec. 645. Emergency system for advance registration of volunteer health professionals.
Sec. 646. Ensuring collaboration and coordination in medical countermeasure development.
Sec. 647. Military and civilian partnership for trauma readiness.
Sec. 648. National Disaster Medical System.
Sec. 649. Volunteer Medical Reserve Corps.
Sec. 649A. Epidemiology-laboratory capacity
Under Sec. 612. Public Health Emergency Preparedness program, the bill amends the definition of this preparedness plan to include community-based institutions and churches. The text says, “community-based organizations, including faith-based organizations, and other public and private entities’’ after ‘‘stakeholders.’’
The bill goes on to state:
"(A) in paragraph (1), in the matter preceding subparagraph (A), by inserting ‘‘and the ability of each entity receiving an award under subsection (a) to respond to all-hazards threats’’ before the period at the end of the first sentence; (B) in paragraph (2)—(i) in the paragraph heading, by striking ‘‘INFLUENZA’’ and inserting ‘‘RESPONSE’’; and (ii) in subparagraph (A)—(I) by striking ‘‘to pandemic influenza’’ and inserting ‘‘to a pathogen causing a pandemic, including pandemic influenza’’; and (II) by striking ‘‘such pandemic influenza’’ and inserting ‘‘such pandemic response’’; (C) in paragraph (5)—(i) in the paragraph heading, by striking ‘‘INFLUENZA’’ and inserting ‘‘PANDEMIC RESPONSE’’;
The package goes on to cite the inclusion of an ill-defined ‘‘Director of the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy.”
Under Sec.626 Medical countermeasures for viral threats with pandemic potential, this includes:
"Research and development of medical countermeasures for priority virus families that have significant potential to cause a pandemic, including such counter measures that take either pathogen-specific or pathogen-agnostic approaches, and platform technologies to improve the development and manufacture of such medicalcountermeasures; "[…]
Johnson’s package deal goes on to support biolabs for viral research, allowing “the Secretary to take into consideration the capacity and capabilities of the network of regional biocontainment laboratories in activities to prepare for and respond to biological agents, which may include leveraging such capacity and capabilities to support the Laboratory Response Network, as applicable and appropriate.”
However, the bill claims to put a ban on what would be considered by some as “gain-of-function” research, as has been reported by some on social media, though words do not constitute action.
But the package does list a few “countries of concern” that could lead to an outbreak, including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
Hey, Breitbart, don’t you consider this to be “pork?” -Of course they don’t: they love tyranny and oppression just as long as it isn’t “woke!” Oh, but Trump said it’s “great” for us – Yeah, I’m sure…
For years I have been documenting and warning that the “next pandemic” was in the wake: the first plandemic was just the warm-up; the real one with mass-casualties is coming…
Yesterday I wrote about how the bird flu nonsense has entered a new stage before this year is expired, with California declaring it a health emergency and the USDA mandating testing of raw dairy in select states. And the headlines about bird flu becoming the next pandemic continue to be churned out on the daily:
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