Times Editorial: 'Republicans want to kill you'

"All those little porky things that the House put in, the money for the [National] Mall or the sexually transmitted diseases or the flu pandemic, they're all out," Schumer said.

The scramble to keep up with the new flu strain has underscored how wrong some Republicans were to eliminate $870 million for pandemic flu preparedness from the stimulus package on the grounds that it was not relevant to creating jobs or stimulating the economy. President Obama was wise to come back with a request for $1.5 billion to supplement medication stockpiles, develop a vaccine, improve monitoring and diagnostic capabilities and assist global efforts to stem the outbreak. Such spending would not only help protect against the flu, it would help keep Americans at work rather than bedridden with swine flu should the virus spread widely.

(1) It's a good point to make that Collins somehow thought pandemic preparation money was not an economic issue deserving of inclusion in the stimulus package. But Collins was for the money being included in some other form. Now, I think her reasoning is stupid - pandemic prevention is part of a recovery plan. But it's not like she was against the very idea of it.

In fact she has voted for a number of bills that included pandemic prevention in the past, including the war funding bill of 2007. This undermines her point about which basket the funding is in, but also proves that she's not against the idea of it.

(2) Relatedly, this money is actually the tail end of money ($7.1 billion worth) that President George W. Bush pushed for in 2005. So this is actually Bush money! To pin all this on the GOP is, thus, a little silly. (HT: Michelle Malkin )