JUST IN: Steve Scalise Demands Hearing On Covid Origins, Says Biden Interfering With Science

i look forward to those discussions to follow up and have that hearing with secretary yellen uh maybe you and i can have further discussions about having a hearing on the origins of covid19 something i'll talk about shortly but first mr chairman to bring us to the subject of today my colleagues on the other side of the aisle plan to use this hearing as an opportunity to shill their massive spending and tax bill that is moving before congress but before we get into that i want to direct everyone's attention to what is happening with the coronavirus and with the biden administration which i thought was supposed to be the purpose of this select subcommittee this virus has killed more than 672 thousand americans the daily death count under president biden's watch is now 2 000 americans a day almost two years into this pandemic and things are still this bad yet we still haven't had a hearing about where the virus came from the united states intelligence community has failed to reach a definitive conclusion about whether the coronavirus escaped from a lab in china or got into humans through an infected animal we are in no better position to prevent the next pandemic today than we were before this subcommittee was created there are serious questions that have been raised about whether the united states played a role in funding gain of function research at the very lab that is suspected of engineering the coronavirus leaked documents from a foia request show that the united states government gave 3.1 million dollars to the health organization eco-health alliance which funded coronavirus research at the wuhan institute of fiderology and that almost six hundred thousand dollars of that taxpayer money was partially used by the wuhan lab to find and alter bat coronaviruses that could jump to humans and infect them why are we not having a hearing on this in fact i was just a few hours ago today in a meeting with the prime minister of australia and one of the things we talked about was the origins of covid and in fact he the prime minister of australia called for an investigation into the origin of this virus over a year ago mr chairman over a year ago now he didn't say that he suspected where it started he said shouldn't we investigate it and do you know what happened after that china actually got into a trade war with australia over that question just the question of where it started maybe there might be a little guilt on their part that just raising the question of saying we're going to look into where this disease that killed over 600 000 americans millions globally started from so we can prevent it from happening again and as soon as you say that china engaged in a trade war with australia but at least australia did not back down mr chairman australia wasn't bullied by china i wonder if anybody who is blocking an investigation into the origins of kovid are more afraid of being bullied by china than they are by getting the facts to how this disease actually started as 2 000 americans every single day are dying and we still haven't had that hearing we will continue to press for that hearing mr chairman american people all across this country want to get those facts deserve to get those answers australia's prime minister had the guts to go and ask that question we ought to as well and we're going to continue on the republican side pushing for that very hearing another area ripe for oversight is the biden administration's political interference with the science that's right you heard president biden talking for two years about no there needs to be no political interference with the science science except now that he's president we see reports that he may be interfering with the science this is what we've seen the president do well first we already know that he went around the science when he catered to union heads to keep kids out of school the science said keep kids in school and the biden administration threw that science out the window to bow to teachers unions who wanted to keep kids out of school which is destroying millions of kids and most recently the biden administration prematurely announced that booster shots would be available this week telling the american people that the vaccines have diminished efficacy over time then two career officials that are involved in vaccine review at the fda departed left the fda amid concerns that the biden white house was pressuring the science scientists pressuring them to recommend boosters before there was any data that backed it up now the fdi advisory committee says no boosters are not broadly necessary yet talk about mixed messaging talk about the biden administration interfering with the science maybe we should have a hearing on that more than nine months into president biden's term as president and he still hasn't appointed an fda commissioner we're in the middle of a pandemic where hundreds of thousands of americans died two thousand americans a day are dying and president biden still to this day nine months in has not appointed ahead of the fda when you look at the lack of therapeutics when you look at some of the rudderless ship accusations that are being made at the fda because they don't have a head yet the president still hasn't appointed it head of the fda mr chairman maybe we should have a hearing in this committee into why the president united states will not appoint someone to head the food and drug administration as we're in the middle of a pandemic that would be an important hearing to have maybe we could jog the president to actually appoint somebody to head the fda and right this rudderless ship that we still see so many problems coming out of just today the new york times extensively covered the lack of in-home testing options the fda's slow pace in approving testing options not to mention the slow pace of therapeutics approval experts called the process for approvals quote onerous and inappropriate why don't we have a hearing on that new york times said covid isn't disappearing anytime soon so long as it continues to circulate and cause both serious illness and anxiety rapid testing is arguably the only way to society can return to something that resembles normal life by the way there's also a migrant crisis at our southern border thousands of people are pouring into the country each and every day we know that many of them are bringing covid into our country our own border patrol agents are telling us that and yet the biden administration is more concerned with putting masks on two-year-old children than imposing these kind of restrictions to prevent covid from coming in to our southern border surely these are topics worth looking into and yet here we are examining ways to spend more money and further fuel inflation which we know the spending is directly fueling and then add mountains more debt to our children today's hearing will be used to try to shill this democrat socialist dream of a bigger welfare state they want to spend three and a half trillion dollars to raise taxes so that they can continue spending on all of these wasteful programs they tout free money everybody knows there's no such thing as free money businesses couldn't find workers all summer long because the democrats insisted on paying people more money not to work than to get back to work when help wanted signs are all across our country companies competing with uncle sam is something that most of them cannot do and by the way to try to do it they're raising prices that's one of the drivers of inflation that is crippling so many families across america on top of that the reckless government spending is causing inflation prices are up at the gas pump at the grocery store the rosin faster than wages even with wages going up inflation's going up even higher it's taking away any benefit that families are getting and in fact the people hit the hardest as we all know from this inflation are the lowest income people i remember back when president biden said nobody making under four hundred thousand dollars would see any kind of tax increase inflation is probably the biggest direct tax increase on low-income families but they don't stop there their tax increase plan also goes after an energy tax yes they're trying to raise taxes on things like natural gas which many families use to heat their homes in a cold winter to cool their homes in hot summer and yet people are going to see double digit increases in their electricity rates if the biden administration gets their way with their tax hikes and who's going to pay the bulk of that yes low income families breaking president biden's pledge if you're making less than a hundred thousand dollars you will be paying more if president biden gets his way on these tax hikes that doesn't touch what happens if he raises income taxes which he's trying to do everybody knows that not only will hurt wage growth it's going to ship millions of jobs overseas you don't have to wonder about it it's what was happening before we cut taxes so if we want to talk about how to get our economy back on track there's a simple answer it's get government out the way help businesses bring back workers help schools reopen and follow the science the science says to do just that but that's not what's happening they're manipulating the science the president continues to go around the science continues to avoid appointing someone to run an agency that should be leading the science on things like more therapeutics we would have less people dying every day if the president focused on that that's why we should be having hearing on those issues not on how to spend more money and saddle our kids with mountains more debt let's focus on solving real problems that we still have today instead of trying to cover them up trying to cover up the president's failures trying to cover up whatever china did that they clearly are concerned about because if they're going after australia because australia wants to find out where this thing started maybe that should tell you something right there that's where our focus should be mr chairman we'll continue to press for that and with that look forward to hearing from our witnesses and i yield back the balance of my time thank you very much

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 160,320

Keywords: steve scalise, covid, origins, covid origins, china, bats, biden

Id: AQ9FOKiiBsE

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021