House Republicans say they ‘will not rest’ until China held accountable for coronavirus pandemic
| June 24, 2021
A group of House Republicans is calling for the United States to be a leader in the international community in holding China accountable for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
The GOP Doctors Caucus, along with Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik and Minority Whip Steve Scalise, rallied behind the priorities laid out in Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy‘s eight-step action plan unveiled on Monday. Among the initiatives McCarthy raised was stopping funding for gain-of-function research in China and pursuing more COVID-19 investigations led by the U.S. government.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS LAUNCH EFFORT TO HOLD CHINA ACCOUNTABLE FOR COVID-19
“House Republicans will not rest until China is held accountable for their role in the COVID-19 virus outbreak and their cover-up, which hurt the entire world,” Stefanik said at a press conference on Thursday.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, an Ohio Republican, introduced legislation this week that would bar the federal government from funding gain-of-function research in foreign adversaries, mentioning China by name, along with Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
“Any research that seeks to enhance pathogenicity, which is the ability to increase its infectiousness or to transmit the disease, would be banned, and I hope for the sake of mankind that this legislation becomes law and lead to a global discussion on the issue,” Wenstrup said of his bill.
Gain-of-function research, including kinds of studies that involve enhancing a virus to make it more infectious to understand how it spreads better, has received intense scrutiny thanks to one theory that the pandemic started with a Chinese laboratory experiment gone wrong.
Scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have denied they were conducting gain-of-function studies in the months before the pandemic, and the National Institutes of Health has denied that any of its financial support for Wuhan research was used for those types of experiments, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans on Capitol Hill from pushing to block U.S. funding to all gain-of-function research in China.
Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, successfully led the charge last month to pass a measure that would stop such studies — citing, among other things, the lack of transparency that Chinese authorities have provided investigators looking into conditions at the Wuhan lab.
Wenstrup’s legislation has a wider focus, blocking federal funds directly or indirectly going to fund gain-of-function to any other country deemed as a foreign adversary by the State Department and other federal agencies.
Wenstrup said he plans to talk to a handful of Democrats on supporting his bill, as they control both chambers of Congress. It is being co-sponsored by Reps. Devin Nunes, Ronny Jackson, and John Joyce, as well as Stefanik and others.
The Biden administration signaled on Sunday the White House won’t take any immediate action on China related to the pandemic until there is an “international consensus” on the issue.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. is working on two tracks on finding out the origins of the coronavirus, including an assessment by the intelligence community that President Joe Biden gave a 90-day deadline for and a second international investigation led by the World Health Organization.
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“We are not, at this point, going to issue threats or ultimatums,” Sullivan told CNN. “What we are going to do is continue to rally support in the international community, and if it turns out that China refuses to live up to its international obligations, we will have to consider our responses at that point, and we will do so in concert with allies and partners.”
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