Vice President Biden is calling on leaders of nongovernmental groups fighting Ebola to help with the White House’s push for additional funding.
“I’m going to be completely honest. We need you and your constituents to help carry the word,” Biden told a roomful of groups leading the ground war against the disease in West Africa.
{mosads}“Your views — each individual organization that’s represented here — carries a lot more weight in this environment, this political environment we find ourselves in, than anything I can say, the president can say, Speaker Boehner can say,” he said, according to a pool report.
The White House has requested $6.18 billion in emergency funds for Ebola, which government agencies have warned must be passed by Congress by Dec. 11 to avoid major gaps in their response.
Biden said nongovernmental organizations — such as Save the Children and the International Medical Corps, both in attendance — were the administration “secret weapon” in the fight against Ebola.
Biden, who was filling in for President Obama as he wraps up his trip in Asia, spoke alongside White House-appointed Ebola coordinator Ron Klain.
Klain warned the groups not to become overly confident in their ability to contain Ebola in West Africa or in the United States. He predicted that the U.S. would see other cases of Ebola “occasionally and sporadically.”
“We are not at the beginning of the end or even the end of the beginning, but we are at the throes of this effort in West Africa with interventions that can work,” Klain said in one of his first public appearances since taking the position.
He has faced flak for his largely behind-the-scenes role, appearing at no congressional hearings and giving very few public remarks.
Biden joked Thursday that Klain, his former chief of staff, took the job because “he did not know how to say no.”