Congressman Mike Kelly is still worried about the threat of an Ebola outbreak.
Rep. Kelly was featured in today’s edition of The Hill talking about his Keeping America Safe from Ebola Act.
The bill would ban visas for foreigners from Ebola stricken areas, including Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The bill will also revoke current visas of residents in areas the Center for Disease Control (CDC) have identified as most afflicted by Ebola.
“We can be halfway around the world in a very short period of time,” Kelly warned in a House floor speech. “It’s not like the old days when these diseases, these viruses, were carried and it took months for them to get from shore to shore, from country to country. It now can travel very quickly.”
The bill resulted from a conversation Kelly had with Dr. Peter Piot who co-discovered the disease in 1976 in the Republic of Congo. The bill has received bipartisan support thus far, and a Senate companion was introduced by Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio. Kelly also championed a bipartisan letter that was sent to President Obama urging him to safeguard Americans from the disease with travel restrictions, airport screenings and quarantine individuals traveling from Western Countries.
Kelly reached out as well to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Sylvia Burwell, and the Director of the CDC, Tom Friede, about his concern that Ebola could spread to Pennsylvania.
Ebola joins Congress’ lame duck to-do list as President Obama asked for an additional $6.2 billion in emergency funding to fight Ebola around the world. Kelly will join his Congressional colleagues to decide how that money will be distributed.
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7 Responses
This is ridiculous – utterly stupid and without any scientific merit. Rep. Kelly is engaged in fearmongering instead of being a leader. He has abdicated his responsibility to his constituents.
Mike Kelly is doing exactly what the residents of PA-3 want. The Obama administration should have done this months ago. Why take any chances with a virus this lethal.
Kelly, Rothfus and Metcalfe (State Rep.)are cut from the same cloth. They represent what is wrong with our political system and above all else they are unfit public officials.
As I understand it the conduct of foreign policy is the President’s with the advice and consent of the Senate.
And health matters are subjects that should be decided by heath experts not political sycophants.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
As true today as it was back then.
Kelly is a cement head used car salesman. He, and his pal Rothfus, are card carrying Tea Partiers and are the primary reason congress is a disfunctional mess. 2016 will be their Waterloo.
Rep. Kelly is the biggest fear-monger in the Pennsylvania congressional delegation. And I say fear monger because I try to restrain myself from using profanity when talking about elected officials.
He also said terrorists are trying to weaponize Ebola and unleash it in our cities. So how about we stop taking him seriously?