Schakowsky Blasts Secretive Funding Process for Partisan Political Panel That Puts Lives at Risk

Statement

Ranking Member Jan Schakowsky released the following statement on the Republicans' irregular and secretive funding process, through which the Majority is now seeking nearly half-a-million additional taxpayer dollars for the Select Investigative Panel without any public scrutiny or debate:

"Over the last eight months, more than three quarters of a million dollars has been funneled to the Select Panel without any public accountability," said Rep. Schakowsky. "At this rate, funding will exceed a million dollars by the end of the year. The Panel has yet to adopt rules or even an investigative plan. But more importantly, and like the three prior House investigations, the Panel has failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing to support Republicans' inflammatory allegations against researchers and doctors.

"In their desperate attempts to justify the Panel's existence, Republicans have manufactured misleading evidence, withheld documents and secret "testimony" from Democrats, and abused congressional subpoena authority to demand information that Congress has no right or need to know, including personal financial information, records of rape victims, and the names of law-abiding researchers, students, lab and clinic personnel, and doctors. Their bullying tactics are straight out of the partisan playbook of Senator Joe McCarthy.

"This has not been -- nor will it ever be - a fact-based investigation. Instead the Panel is being run as a taxpayer-funded arm of anti-abortion groups, in pursuit of a partisan, anti-science, and anti-health care agenda. Enough is enough. Instead of sanctioning secretive special funding, Speaker Ryan should heed the request of 181 of his Democratic colleagues and disband this dangerous witch hunt."

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