Wednesday marked the first time in almost two years that administration health officials have been subpoenaed to testify in the House of Representatives about the COVID-19 pandemic. The new GOP majority made it clear that they would not wait that long again.
“The CDC doesn’t need more authority,” House Chairwoman Energy and Commerce Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) told Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It needs solid oversight.”
The CDC “has always operated without congressional authorization, and that’s about to change,” McMorris Rodgers said.
Aside from Walensky, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf, and Lawrence Tabak, acting director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), they have faced issues ranging from the effectiveness of mask and vaccine mandates to concerns about funding more controversial ones “Gain of Function” research was enough. which makes pathogens more dangerous to find new cures.
Republicans have reopened an investigation into the origins of the pandemic and are demanding documents from the NIH.
Notably missing from the jury was Anthony Fauci, the former longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who retired late last year. House Republicans have vowed to bring him in to testify and answer questions about the origins of the coronavirus and his agency’s role in funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China.
In his absence, Tabak and the NIH took the brunt of lawmakers’ wrath.
In January, a report from the Inspector General of the Heath and Human Services Office found that the NIH failed to monitor effectively or take timely action to address issues with previous grants.
“For the last two years we’ve been pushing for answers about what kind of research you fund with taxpayers’ money and what kind of oversight you do to make sure the funds aren’t misappropriated. Their collaboration was abysmal,” said McMorris Rodgers.
