Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., is hoping a new House panel looking at the federal response to the coronavirus crisis will focus on the role China and the World Health Organization played in the pandemic.
Scalise, the House select committee’s top Republican, told The Hill he wants lawmakers to address how to best hold China accountable for withholding information and spreading an early false narrative.
“I’d like to see the focus start with China and the World Health Organization, because serious concerns have been raised about Tedros [Adhanom Ghebreyesus], the head of WHO, and his close affiliation with the Chinese Communist Party, and the things that they did to work with China to hide the facts about the COVID-19 from the rest of the world,” Scalise told The Hill.
The House Minority Whip hopes the panel won’t take a political turn as some GOP colleagues have warned.
“This is a committee that we said from the beginning wasn’t necessary because there are other oversight committees that cover every aspect of the recovery, and you also have inspectors general that have been appointed in each agency,” he told The Hill.
“But at the same time, we want to make sure that the committee is really focused on helping people get back to work and helping rebuild the economy,” he said.
“There are other things that I feel strongly that we should be focused on, and that is holding China accountable for what they did to hide the facts from us in the rest of the world, and also to address the problems with supply chain where … China’s in control of so many things that are vital to us like PPE [personal protective equipment] and even our generic drugs. So that’s where I’d like to see the committee focus, but we’re gonna see real soon which way it goes,” he added.
Scalise is upset with how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Democrats have “focused on harassment of the president from day one.”
“I hope they don’t abuse this committee and the taxpayer dollars that’ll be spent on it focusing on that approach, I hope they try to work with the president to make sure that we can get families back to work and reopen our economy safely,” he said. “And if we do that it would be successful, but time will tell.”
Democrats announced Friday the committee’s first official action was sending letters to large corporations demanding they return any stimulus money they had received as part of the Paycheck Protection Program, which was aimed at providing forgivable loans to small businesses.
Scalise called the move “outrageous,” The Hill reported.
via newsmax
