What, me worry?

Most economists--most people, in fact-- think that one of the roles of government is to provide public goods, such as infrastructure, defense and public health provisioning. So of all the things in the stimulus to criticize, these should have been deemed acceptable to Republicans (via Paul Krugman):

"So Bobby Jindal makes fun of 'volcano monitoring', and soon afterwards Mt. Redoubt erupts. Susan Collins makes sure that funds for pandemic protection are stripped from the stimulus bill, and the swine quickly attack."

While Europe and East Asia are well equipped to manufacture vaccines in the event of a flu outbreak, the US is behind the curve--there's only one factory in the entire country capable of production. No, government is not always the answer; but sometimes it is.