SHOCKER: AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness.

Democratic presidential contenders are describing the federal infectious-disease bureaucracy as rudderless and ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of budget cuts and ham-handed leadership by President Donald Trump. That’s a distorted picture. For starters, Trump hasn’t succeeded in cutting the budget.

He’s proposed cuts but Congress ignored him and increased financing instead. The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect.

Also, you could cut the budget for a lot of CDC activities and not affect disease-fighting readiness at all, except maybe to improve it, because a lot of CDC activities are worthless mission creep.