Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, Dr. Roe, for yielding and for convening this hour. I think it is so important that the people hear directly from us, the doctors who are serving in the United States House of Representatives. When Dr. Roe was delivering his remarks, I was reminded of how the information about this illness came to us and how serious it seemed that a city in China, a city of 10 million people, would be shut down. Clearly, this was a significant illness and must be taken quite seriously, but I will say the committee on which I serve, the Subcommittee on Health for the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the very committee that the Congress before had worked on the reauthorization of the Pandemic All-Hazards Preparedness Act, would not hold a hearing on this during the month of February. It was a missed opportunity. We had created the legislation that reauthorized pandemic preparedness. The President had signed that into law in June 2019. Now, 6 months later, we are faced with this possible worldwide pandemic. You would think there would have been enough curiosity on the committee to do some real-time oversight. Did we get it right? Were we focused on the right conditions? Were we responding to the right signals? But we don't know because we didn't look. We had to do hearings on flavored tobacco, horse racing, ticket stubs, all kinds of other things.…”