[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 15, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1179-S1180]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Ms. ERNST:
  S. 3836. A bill to establish within the Executive Office of the 
President the Taxpayer Watchdog Office; to the Committee on Homeland 
Security and Governmental Affairs.
  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

[[Page S1180]]

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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