Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt said Sunday that he would be careful when it comes to "overdoing it" when it comes to political arguments about the Ebola crisis, but he understands why Americans don't trust the government when it comes to dealing with the health scare.
"If this was one incident where people thought the government wasn't doing what the government was supposed to do, it would be much less of a reaction than we see now," Blunt told NBC
"Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd. "Now there's this long list of the government being one step behind, whether it's the border, the IRS, (and) the Secret Service."
With the health concerns springing up over the government's ability to deal with Ebola, it is "more than it would be if there wasn't a sense that the government is just not being managed in way that people would want it to be managed," Blunt said.
Meanwhile, the Missouri senator said that he believes visas should be suspended for people coming into the United States for people arriving from the West African region where the Ebola epidemic continues to grow.
"We don't have flights directly in and out of any of these countries," Blunt said. "All of our people go through some other country to get there anyway. The question is, do you let people come here from this area that is clearly stressed?"
But without a visa, people coming in from West Africa would not be able to stay in the United States, said Blunt, and he would "suspend that until we have this under better control and have a sense that the [airline] carriers they are using are monitoring this in a better way than they have been up until now."
Blunt also does not believe hospitals are as safe "as we were a month ago" before Ebola cases started developing in the United States, but he is not sure that CDC protocols, which are now voluntary, should be made mandatory.
"I'm not sure if you made them mandatory would you have a way to enforce that mandatory determination," said Blunt. The nation's three containment hospitals obviously follow the protocols, said Blunt, but "that doesn't stop somebody from walking into a hospital somewhere else."
Meanwhile, Blunt said that Americans were not as upset about Ebola when it appeared that the virus was being dealt with in the right way.
"You had two missionaries come to Emory; they were there, they were cured," the Republican lawmaker said. "I didn't see a single comment by any American saying we're concerned this isn't being handled correctly. It's only when it's not handled correctly that people get concerned."
Todd noted that there have been some comments made that the problem could be better handled if a surgeon general were to be confirmed.
The
confirmation for President Barack Obama's stalled nominee, Vivek Murthy, 36, has been stalled by both parties in the Senate following National Rifle Association opposition after he called gun violence a national health crisis.
"The president really ought to nominate people that can be confirmed to these jobs," Blunt said Sunday. "Then we should confirm them...you have to ask Sen. [Harry] Reid why he hasn't moved that to the top of his list to be confirmed. "
Until the Ebola crisis came up, Blunt said, he heard "very little discussion about the surgeon general."
But the decision, like many others, will most likely come after the Nov. 4 election.
"I'm hearing now that the attorney general nomination [also] won't happen until after the election," he said. " We keep putting put everything off until after the election. That's one of the reasons that things don't work."
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