Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) introduced two bills requiring transparency for taxpayer dollars spent on projects in China and other adversarial countries.
On Tuesday, Ernst introduced the Tracking Receipts to Adversarial Countries for Knowledge of Spending Act and the Accountability in Foreign Animal Research Act. The bills target high-risk medical research and spending perceived as wasteful.
The TRACKS Act would establish standards for disclosing all data regarding U.S. funding for projects in adversarial countries.
The AFAR Act would ban the Department of Health and Human Services from sending taxpayer funds “to directly or indirectly conduct biomedical research or experimentation that involves testing on vertebrate animals in any facility” owned by adversarial countries.
The release of the bills was timed to coincide with Tax Day.
“Americans should never pay taxes to China, not 1 cent,” Ernst said. “Especially not to fund risky research in sketchy labs like the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I am exposing every cent sent overseas and ending the madness to ensure taxpayers no longer foot the bill for crazy pseudoscience overseas.”
Justin Goodman, Senior Vice President of White Coat Waste, praised the bill.
“As White Coat Waste’s investigations exposed, Fauci and [the U.S. Agency of International Development’s] secretive spending on gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan animal lab probably infected Patient Zero and prompted a pandemic that killed millions. Yet, the Pentagon, [the National Institute of Health], and other agencies continue to recklessly ship tax dollars to unaccountable labs in China. We applaud Sen. Joni Ernst for reintroducing the TRACKS Act because taxpayers have a right to know if their money is being funneled to foreign adversaries, especially for cruel and dangerous animal experiments,” he said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Ernst’s office cited an April 2023 audit from the Government Accountability Office, which found that the true extent of U.S. funding for China was unknown, especially through NIH. U.S. skepticism toward medical research in China has increased under the Trump administration, which believes some risky research practices, such as gain of function, may have been responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.
While China is the primary focus of the bills, they also target money spent on Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
HOW TO DECOUPLE FROM CHINA SENSIBLY
Aside from medical research, Ernst highlighted other spending in China under the Biden administration that the investigation viewed as wasteful. The United States spent over $100,000 on diversity, equity, and inclusion training in China and $24,000 on a bakery ingredients roadshow in the country, according to data from USAspending.gov.
Ernst has found an ally in the Trump administration in her attempts to cut government waste. She co-founded the Department of Government Efficiency Caucus to coordinate with Elon Musk’s DOGE to cut perceived government waste more effectively. Last month, she asked Office of Management and Budget head Russell Vought to implement her previous bills, accusing the Biden administration of ignoring them.
