Energy and Commerce Republican Leader Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Health Subcommittee Republican Leader Brett Guthrie (R-KY) released the following statement after the Biden administration renewed the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declaration.
“President Joe Biden said himself the COVID-19 pandemic is over. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention is also finally recognizing we are in a very different place. Yet, as today’s renewal indicates, the administration is clinging to its emergency powers and refusing to take responsibility for how it fueled inflation by mismanaging trillions of dollars. It has broken people’s trust with heavy-handed mandates, politically-influenced school closures, and radical pandemic spending for political purposes.
“For many months, we’ve been calling on President Biden and Secretary Xavier Becerra to provide a detailed plan to unwind the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. We are again asking for this plan and urging the administration to rebuild trust with the hardworking people of this country. Americans are eager for a federal government that is less focused on command and control of their lives and doesn’t play politics with public health.”
NOTE: In February 2022, Leader Rodgers sent a letter with 75 of her House Republican colleagues urging President Biden and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to accept that COVID-19 has become endemic, recognize that current heavy-handed government interventions are doing more harm than good, and immediately provide a plan to unwind the public health emergency so our country can get back to normal.
On August 12, 2022, Leader Rodgers and Health Subcommittee Republican Leader Brett Guthrie (R-KY) released a statement on President Biden’s plans to extend the public health emergency for COVID-19. They said, “Instead of clinging to his emergency powers, President Biden should get to work and take seriously the need to rebuild trust and confidence in America’s public health agencies. That starts with being completely transparent to Congress, providing the detailed plan we’ve been asking for, and reining in the reckless spending and federal command and control that is hurting people’s quality of life.”
On September 19, 2022, Leader Rodgers said “Now that the President has finally acknowledged the pandemic is over, he should immediately begin to unwind the public health emergency (PHE) so our country can get back to normal. We’ve been calling on the Biden administration to provide a plan to end the public health emergency for months and provide a full accounting of how it spent trillions of dollars that fueled inflation. Instead of clinging to his emergency powers and asking for $22 billion in more COVID-19 spending, President Biden should get to work and take seriously the need to rebuild trust and confidence in America’s public health agencies. It is long past time.”
Original source can be found here.
