Four U.S. Senators are calling for “extensive reform” at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the agency’s aggressive overreach during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lawmakers, led by GOP Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, called on Democrat Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions, for reform at the CDC. Cosigners of the letter include Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), and Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).
In the letter, which was obtained by Townhall, the senators propose that the CDC end vaccine mandates and restrict federal powers to demand compulsory vaccination, like what the nation saw with the COVID-19 vaccine. In addition, it proposes that the CDC director’s advisory board be appointed by Congress and ensures that local groups, like teachers unions, do not dictate public health policy.
“As the entire country has witnessed over the past three and a half years, the public health system of the United States did not have the necessary systems in place to adequately respond to the COVID-19 threat. This failure of a response has had serious implications. Lives were lost, businesses were shuttered, and children were kept from classrooms,” the letter stated.
“To return to a state where unelected bureaucrats in unnamed agencies had the power over entire sectors of the economy would be an insult to our constituents. As you prepare to advance the reauthorization of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), we believe that further efforts need to be made to better reform our public health response. Our constituents demand we take the lessons learned to ensure our country correctly can address the future threat of another pandemic, while also prohibiting disastrous policies that shut down our economy and shut down our schools,” the letter added. “This reform must start with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Not only has the CDC been provided an extensive amount of additional funding for COVID-19 response, but the agency failed to update and modernize its response plans and systems as required by Congress in 2006.”
Townhall previously reported how American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was pressed in a congressional hearing about her union’s influence over COVID-19 school closures that set children back years.
In the hearing, Weingarten told Kentucky Rep. James Comer (R-KY) that the union suggested “concepts” to the CDC regarding “reasonable accommodations” for teachers and that there should be a review of the policies if a new variant were discovered.
“It’s unusual for a political union to have such a role in the scientific guidance process,” Comer responded.
“Abuse of power and bureaucratic overreach have riddled the CDC, and the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the serious flaws that exist within the CDC,” Schmitt said in a statement to Townhall. “We saw unprecedented abuses of power during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the CDC was the tip of the spear. We need top-down reform of the CDC and Congressional oversight, and we need it now.”