5 February 2002

White House Press Briefing on Air Force One, February 5

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer briefed on Air Force One as President Bush travels to Pittsburgh to deliver remarks on funding for bioterrorism.

Following is the White House transcript:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

11:12 A.M. EST

Mr. Fleischer: The President this morning had his intelligence briefings, had some staff meetings, and then Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh, the President is going to give a speech in which he discusses his strategy to protect America against biological terrorism.

His budget represents a 319 percent increase in funding against bioterrorism, and that's $5.9 billion, to improve America's state and local hospitals and health systems, improve response efforts, build up the national pharmaceutical stockpile, and develop new vaccines, medicines and diagnostic tests through aggressive R&D.

The President will also focus for new funding on infrastructure needs, such as strengthening state and local health care systems, enhancing medical communications and disease surveillance capabilities. It will focus on response, which means improving specialized federal capabilities to respond in coordination with state and local governments and private capabilities, as well as science.

So three broad areas -- infrastructure, response, and science -- will be the emphasis of the President's proposed funding increase. Science will be a focus on meeting medical needs of bioterrorism response by developing specific new vaccines, medicines, and diagnostic tests.

In Pittsburgh, the President will observe a state-of-the-art real-time surveillance system that can track acute infectious diseases and help implement control measures in the event of a bioterror attack. And this is at the University of Pittsburgh's Medical Center. He's going to visit a facility called RODS, which is an acronym for real-time outbreak and disease surveillance.

It was created in September of 1999, is now a collaboration between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon University. It's received grants from the Department of Defense and the Centers for Disease Control.

It provides early warning of infectious disease outbreaks by collecting clinical information from 17 regional hospitals. It can monitor up to 800 patient systems, gender, locale, and medical test results gathered directly from emergency rooms, while also tracking interesting or unusual patterns. This wide range of information helps physicians detect possible outbreaks or biological attacks, and thus promptly directs treatment and control measures. This RODS system will be in use in Salt Lake during the Olympics.

And then the President will make remarks at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, outlining the strategy to fight bioterrorism and the funding increases he's proposed in his budget.

Question: Ari, how did some of these specific programs -- what kind of specific benefits do they have beyond bioterrorism, for general public health?

Answer: Big benefits beyond bioterrorism. This is one of the interesting side benefits of the President's proposed funding increases to combat bioterrorism. It strengthens the nation's public health system. It strengthens emergency rooms. It strengthens state medical systems. In fighting and preventing bioterrorism, it gives doctors, nurses, emergency rooms and hospitals more resources so they can fight regular diseases.

The Centers for Disease Control, for example, have large funding increases. And very often the research they do in one area has benefits that extend to other areas beyond bioterrorism.

Q: Presumably he's holding this up as an example of what he'd like to see created all across the country.

A:: That's correct.

Q: Any idea how many of these types of centers he wants --

A:: Secretary Thompson might have more specific information on that. I don't know. Secretary Thompson and Governor Ridge are both on board, so let me see if I can't figure out a time while we're out there to see if they're available to answer some --

Q: He does see this as a model, though? Let's duplicate this?

A:: That's correct. And the funding is designed to help duplicate it.

During the anthrax scares, one of the keys was monitoring emergency rooms across the country. And we had all kinds of reports -- but ensuring accurate reports so the government could respond in case there was another anthrax attack; the ability to have emergency rooms in real time tied in quickly to state health departments. So that if it was another case of anthrax, the government could respond immediately and quickly with anthrax antibiotics. That was a key to fighting anthrax.

That's a direct product of what the President is talking about today, emergency rooms who, in real time, transfer information to state health departments who get them to the federal government. The ability of laboratories to be able to analyze anthrax, including what we learned from the anthrax outbreak is you get all kinds of hoaxes that jam up the system. So the system has to be able to handle surges. And that's also part of the funding that the President is proposing today, to enable hospitals and labs to handle surges in case of attack.

Q: The $11 billion figure that you used yesterday, where does that come from? That's a two-year figure -- so this year and next year, or this year and -- how does that --

A:: The President's budget nearly doubles spending on homeland security. This includes $5.9 billion to counter bioterrorism. That's the 2003 request, is $5.9 billion, which is an increase of 319 percent from last year's levels.

So the $5.9 billion to defend against biological terrorism, an increase of $.5 billion from the 2002 level.

Q: So the $11 billion is adding together current and --

A:: I saw something yesterday that indicated that was a two-year figure. I'd have to take a look at whether that's an '04 anticipation figure, as well. Because the '03 figure, you subtract $4.5 billion, was $1.4 billion -- the '03 is $5.9 billion.

Q: Ari, do you have anything on this report that's out there about al Qaeda attempting to assassinate President Clinton?

A:: I've not heard that report.

Q: There's a UPI report that's out --

A:: That this morning?

Q: Yes.

A:: I have not heard that report.

Anything else?

Q: Do you have any response to Senator Hollings yesterday was calling for an investigation, a special counsel, to look into the Bush administration's relations with Enron. Do you have any sort of response to that?

A:: The Department of Justice already addressed that yesterday. But Senator Hollings yesterday was very disappointing, because this is a time when Democrats and Republicans need to work together to treat this as a serious issue, to have a criminal investigation of wrongdoing, and to act together to protect pensions. It's not helpful if a United States senator simply makes things up, such as he did about Mitch Daniels and Secretary O'Neill.

This needs to be handled in a nonpartisan and a thoughtful manner in order to help people and get to the bottom of this.

Q: Do you mean, the disappointing part is his comments about Daniels and O'Neill, or his call for a special prosecutor?

A:: Just making things up. I mean, it's important to speak factually about these matters. And making things up as part of a partisan endeavor doesn't help protect anybody's pensions. It only reminds people of the bitterness and the partisanship that has too often marked business in Washington. And that needs to be changed.

Okay. Thanks, everybody.

END 11:21 A.M. EST