CDC OFF CENTER
A review of how an agency tasked with fighting and preventing disease has spent hundreds of millions of tax dollars for failed prevention efforts, international junkets, and lavish facilities, but cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease.


Congress responds to CDC abuse
Download and read the complete blistering 115 page report
by Senator Coburn

Report Highlights:

CDC Targets Diseases … Results Still Pending:
page 23-80

Click to enlarge table


• CDC’s prevention funding for HIV/AIDS: $5 billion over seven years

• Of CDC’s $2.6 billion in HIV/AIDS grants, some have no objectives and are “abysmal,” yet funded anyway

• CDC’s domestic HIV/AIDS program: results not demonstrated

• CDC-funded events featuring porn stars, transgender beauty pageants, and flirting classes

• CDC’s $45 million for conferences featuring prostitutes, protests, and beach parties

• CDC announces plan to eliminate syphilis: five years later rates up overall and 68 percent among men

CDC’s Statistic Problems and Fraud: 
page 81-86

• CDC revises U.S. obesity deaths by 1,400 percent in nine months

• CDC Inspector General investigations find over $1 million in fraud in just three cases

It Pays to be a CDC Employee:  
page 87-103

• CDC pays $1.7 million to Hollywood liaison; ex-employee runs liaison shop

• CDC’s top financial officers take home a quarter of a million dollars in bonuses

• The revolving door: how a former CDC executive lands CDC contracts worth millions for minority-owned companies

• CDC pays two former employees $250,000 to help build morale

• HHS Secretary uses CDC’s leased jet for meetings and speeches: CDC defends use

How CDC Funding is Counterintuitive:  
page 104-110

• CDC-funded bar night and manual on how to throw an alcohol party

• CDC sets bioterrorism results-oriented goals after spending billions

GETTING CDC BACK ON TRACK:
CDC should get back on track toward accountability and responsible disease control by implementing the following six recommendations:

• CDC (and the politicians that fund it) should require the reviews of existing programs, the consolidation of overlapping programs, and the elimination of ineffective programs.

• CDC should reprioritize its funding and efforts toward preventing and controlling diseases. Period.

• Prevention programs should be science-based, subject to rigorous audits and reviews, and continued funding should be tied to measurable outcomes.

• CDC programs and grantees should not promote or support unhealthy or risky behaviors, and those that do so should be defunded.

• CDC preparedness programs should include regular drills and tests to assess and correct weaknesses in planning or execution and allow for a reprogramming or reprioritization of funding.

• CDC should reexamine the profligate spending in its own backyard. Creating a theme-park-like campus in Atlanta, with Japanese gardens, a wall full of plasma screen televisions showing vignettes to visitors, and installing employee saunas and mood-enhancing light shows, strays from CDC’s mission to be good stewards of limited taxpayer dollars.
3Ibid.