Comment on DOGE cut 20% of APHIS the agency that protects U.S. agriculture and now the screwworm parasite that wipes out livestock has returned to the U.S

• prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Biden tried to fix it without any sense of urgency

  I would say funding it at 4x is pretty urgent

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  • Folstar@lemmus.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Sadly, no. That response in 2018-2021 would have been urgent, appropriate. By waiting until 2023 when reports were coming out in '21 that the Darian Gap was failing and '22 that it had failed, Biden did in fact drop the ball. The administration chose to try to work with/through Central American governments who, frankly, hadn’t dealt with screwworms in over a generation and were poorly equipped or completely clueless. Also, it’s worth noting, this facility was relatively inexpensive to operate at less than $20M/year. We had a beautiful system in place but Republican ignorance and Democrat pussyfooting has put us in a terrible position. The sunbelt population boom of the last 50 years was not just about AC.

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  • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Biden was inaugurated in '21. Why did it take multiple years for that funding to be budgeted?

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    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Maybe you don’t remember, but before Trump, we didn’t accept presidential rule by decree

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      • darthelmet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Well, except for small, unimportant things like sending people to another country to go kill people.

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      • Folstar@lemmus.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Also incorrect. USDA has a great deal of discretionary funding. The new $750M facility being build in Texas (several thousand km from the Darian Gap = great plan!) was approved internally at USDA. There was nothing stopping the funding in '21 other than not recognizing how dire the problem could become in just a few years.

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      • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        So did the dems use presidential decree to get the funding in 2023?

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      • eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Bullshit. Republicans always believed in it.

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  • kunaltyagi@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I’d assume at least 10x was asked, and it took years for the funding to arrive

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