Ebola Money

Gen. David Rodriquez, head of U.S. Africa Command, held a briefing at the Pentagon earlier today in which he was asked how much it would cost to deploy U.S. troops to Africa to help fight the Ebola epidemic, to which he responded:

The cost estimates right now are probably around $750 million for our efforts, and that's in about a six-month period. And, again, the challenge with doing that is that those labs, for example, were not in the current -- you know, in the initial plan, so it's going to have to be a free-flowing, flexible adjustment on all that.

In a Sept. 17 memo, the Congressional Research Service gave lawmakers a summary of the Ebola-related spending requests submitted to Capitol Hill by the Pentagon. The "Insights" memo, originally obtained by Secrecy News, states:

DOD submitted two separate prior approval reprogramming requests dated September 8 and September 17 to the House and Senate appropriations and armed services committees. These would make available up to $1 billion for DOD's support of the United States' response to the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Some of the funding in the initial $500 million request also would be available to support continuing humanitarian activities in Iraq. The President's announcement stated that the U.S. Africa Command will set up a Joint Force Command headquartered in Monrovia, Liberia, to provide regional command and control support to U.S military activities and to facilitate coordination with U.S. government and international relief efforts. A general from U.S. Army Africa, the Army component of U.S. Africa Command, will lead this effort, which will involve an estimated 3,000 U.S. forces.