On the recordNovember 14, 2023
Mr. Chair, I agree with the gentlewoman from Connecticut when she said we need to fund the SNS. That is the bottom line. Mr. Chair, you read the Constitution like I read it. National Defense is one of the things outlined for Congress in the Constitution. We don't have adequate defense stockpiles in the Strategic National Stockpile. Let's talk smallpox, for example. We had 200 million doses back in 2018. A lot of those have expired. The bottom line is that anthrax has a 30 percent mortality rate. We need a vaccine for every American, everyone living in the United States. It is that simple, because anthrax, Mr. Chair, is not something you have to develop in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. God knows they can develop dangerous weaponry. It can be stolen from somewhere and duplicated. It doesn't take a First World country to be an anthrax threat. Now with regard to the buildings at NIH, as I explained before, Mr. Chair, there is a $1.8 billion building slush fund over at HHS. They have accumulated $1.8 billion in what they call their nonrecurring expense fund. Mr. Chair, I will remind you, because of Bidenomics and a 5 percent interest rate, that is $90 million a year we are paying on interest on their slush fund. Mr. Chair, what I am proposing is we take the money out of NIH--and I will join with the gentlewoman from Connecticut in writing a letter to Secretary Becerra asking him to backfill that money from his slush fund.…





