Republicans Are Addressing the Major Crises

Floor Speech

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Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Speaker, over 3.8 million people across the world have died from COVID-19, over 600,000 Americans have died. We deserve to know how the COVID-19 pandemic began.

There is mounting evidence to show that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a probable source of that. If we look at the assertions by China to say that this was transmitted naturally from a bat through a wet market, things just don't add up.

If we look at the information we have gotten from our intelligence communities, if we look at what we have seen to this point across the whole spectrum, we deserve to know exactly what has happened.

If we want to uncover the truth behind COVID-19, if we are serious about preventing future pandemics, if we are serious about holding China accountable, then I believe we need to do everything we can to follow the science.

By profession and by education, I am a biologist. In fact, I worked in and ran laboratories for years, laboratories that handled pathogenic organisms. I know the things that need to be done to uncover exactly what happened at the Wuhan lab.

It doesn't make sense to look at the assertions that China makes and somehow believe that that is indeed the case. I don't think that this is a random event. I do believe that there are links to the Wuhan lab that must have an independent and thoughtful evaluation of exactly what happened.

We have to force China to allow a free, objective, and independent evaluation of exactly what happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and determine what role did it play in the origins of this pandemic. We have to do that.

I want to ensure the investigation happens and that we hold Chinese officials accountable. That is why I introduced The World Deserves to Know Act, because, indeed, the world deserves to know. The World Deserves to Know Act will sanction key Chinese officials in their Centers for Disease Control, in their national health commission who obfuscated data, the data necessary to determine exactly what happened; and also, through our intelligence gathering, to identify those individuals in the Chinese Communist Party that persecuted scientists, that persecuted citizen journalists that sought to divulge the truth about what happened there. There must be a free, open, and independent evaluation that is allowed in order for us to know. Again, the world deserves to know.

In the meantime, what my bill would do is also prohibit funding from going to China from any U.S. institution, our universities, our colleges, anyplace that would send money either to the National Health Commission or any entity associated with the National Health Commission, like the Wuhan lab for the research that we have seen going on there, the gain-of-function research. We have to make sure that that happens.

I want to make sure, too, that we identify where dollars have gone from the U.S., from the National Institutes of Health or any other governmental entity or any entity associated with our Federal Government, State governments, or local governments that may have sent money to China for gain-of-function research. We have to know exactly where the money went, where it came from, and who was the decisionmaker about how that money got there. And that needs to go all the way up through our bureaucracies not only at the Federal level, but at the State level also. Anywhere there is an association, that needs to be known.

I want to make sure, too, that my bill allows Taiwan observer status in the World Health Organization to make sure that they check China's malign influence over the organization. Taiwan was at the very beginning of making sure that this was transparent.

This is not about political gamesmanship. This is about getting to the truth not only for the sake of truth itself, but to make sure the United States never suffers another pandemic like the one we just endured.

I hope that all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join me in holding China accountable and supporting and cosponsoring The World Deserves to Know Act.

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