New report reveals how CDC can be ready for the next pandemic

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a new director.

Dr. Joel Zinberg is senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and director of Paragon Health Institute’s Public Health and American Well-Being Initiative.

A new study we wrote for the Paragon Health Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute reviewed the history, organization, and pandemic performance of the CDC. It identified the source of CDC’s pandemic failures as mission creep, abetted by the lack of congressional authorization for the agency. The CDC has grown into a large, diffuse agency with priorities that are far afield from its core mission of preventing and controlling communicable disease outbreaks. This lack of focus left the agency unprepared for the pandemic and distracted it from an effective response.

Congress normally exercises its spending power through a two-step process of authorization and appropriation. According to the Congressional Research Service, authorization measures "establish, continue, or modify an agency, program, or activity…[and] set forth the duties and functions of an agency or program, its organizational structure, and [its] responsibilities." Appropriations measures then provide funding.