Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Ms. ERNST. Mr. President, there are very few things that possess the power to change the course of history almost instantaneously. Information is one.

Consider, right now, citizens in Ukraine are holding one of the most ruthless, autocratic, and powerful men in the world, Vladimir Putin, accountable for his barbaric assault on their country with their firsthand accounts being live-streamed from behind the battle lines.

Putin is attempting to censor coverage of the bloody conflict by threatening to jail journalists and Russian citizens who dare use the word ``war'' to describe his unprovoked attack.

Even the United Nations instructed its staff not to refer to Russia's military assault on Ukraine as a ``war'' or ``invasion.'' Yet, every day, Ukrainians are bypassing this blockade of information and exposing the Russian tyrant's atrocities in real time by sharing images of civilians standing up to the heavily armed Russian invaders, the innocent victims and destruction caused by the bombing, and captured Russian soldiers in tears testifying that they were lied to and misled into attacking a peaceful country.

As a result, the people of Ukraine have rallied the world, including many Russians, behind their courageous struggle to preserve freedom and democracy against the largest military assault in Europe since World War II.

This is the power of information.

Authoritarians like Putin cannot hide their dirty deeds in the dark as long as light can be shined to expose the truth. It should serve as a reminder to every single American how important it is that we uphold and defend the fundamental principles of our Nation that make us so great--in particular, our First Amendment.

We should never take these American freedoms for granted. That is why it is important we celebrate the freedom of information every year during Sunshine Week. With widespread distrust in government and the media and Big Tech controlling what facts and opinions can even be shared, it has become increasingly important that each one of us has the power to access facts, unfiltered.

To arm us with information, over the past half century, a number of important laws have been passed by Congress to increase openness in government and give our citizens a right to know. These include the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, which allows access to government documents, and the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which provides a detailed accounting of how, where, why, and by whom taxpayer dollars are being spent.

To demonstrate the importance of these laws, let me give you a relatively simple example with potentially profound implications.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I teamed up with my friends at the White Coat Waste Project to use a combination of these transparency laws to follow a trail of U.S. taxpayer dollars to China's state-run Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they were being used to pay for dangerous research on coronaviruses. The world is now demanding to know if these studies could have been the source of the COVID-19 pandemic that shut down our planet for the past 2 years and claimed the lives of millions around the globe.

Regretfully, we still don't know the whole truth because communist China refuses to cooperate and is, instead, destroying evidence and coercing investigators to dismiss any suggestion that the virus might have escaped from the lab. Even many within the free press of our own country, the scientific community, and Big Tech fell for the Communist misinformation campaign, smearing anyone who even suggested the lab could have been the source of the outbreak as spreading ``conspiracy theories.''

We refused to be intimidated by this Communist Party's propaganda and continued our search for the truth. We followed the science and the money and discovered the world was being told a story that was very much different from what was transpiring behind those closed doors.

Thanks, in part, to a transparency law requiring the disclosure of details on projects paid for by U.S. taxpayers, we knew NIH was funding a group called EcoHealth to conduct experiments on coronaviruses that were obtained from bats in China and that they were doing so in collaboration with the now-infamous Wuhan Institute.

The White Coat Waste Project then used FOIA to obtain internal NIH emails, which revealed the Agency was funding controversial gain-of- function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute in 2016. They also revealed Dr. Fauci was told as early as January 2020 that COVID-19 looked engineered.

Was this project, paid for with your tax dollars, somehow related to the release of the COVID-19 pandemic, which just happened to begin in the vicinity of the lab in Wuhan?

EcoHealth might know the truth or even provide some clues, but the group's president refuses to answer questions. In fact, he organized a disinformation campaign to discredit scientists who dared to ask that question.

EcoHealth also evaded a number of Federal transparency laws requiring the disclosure of how our tax dollars are being spent. As a result, we still aren't even entirely sure how much of our money was sunk into subsidizing the unsafe, state-run lab in communist China.

Folks, we really deserve the answers, and if EcoHealth won't cooperate voluntarily, then that information will be obtained with subpoenas when Republicans are back in control of Congress. You can mark my words.

This troubling situation demonstrates both the power and the shortcomings of transparency laws. Armed with information, citizens can uphold the government and make it accountable and expose malfeasance but only if the laws are followed, and, right now, many of these laws are all bark and no bite.

So what can a civic-minded Iowan do to get answers from inside the DC beltway bureaucracy?

Well, you know what they say: If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

That is why I have introduced the Watchdog Act, which will establish within the White House a new Director of Openness--yes, you have got it, D-O-G--Director of Openness in Government, who will be the taxpayers' best friend. This top dog will hound our government bureaucrats to fetch the facts for our taxpayers. Agencies that would not provide information in a complete and timely manner would be dogged until they do.

In contrast to Russia, where the government controls and censors information, my bill creates a transparency czar to open government and spread information.

Folks, we can't have gatekeepers of truth in a free society. That is why, under my bill, those who censor information, rather than those who share it, will be held accountable.

The best way to restore trust in our public institutions and to discredit misinformation campaigns is by shining a light on what is really going on in Washington, and with the Sun now setting an hour later every day, we are all reminded what a big difference a little bit of sunshine can make.

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