Republicans will target 'public health bureaucrats' when in majority

Republicans plan on holding public health bureaucrats such as Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable after the 2022 midterm elections, according to a Republican Study Committee (RSC) memo on Monday from Chairman Jim Banks (R-Ind.).

While many of the left's COVID-19 policies "went unchallenged...  public health authorities soon started issuing nonsensical, contradictory directives and embracing partisan rhetoric," according to the memo. 

"If Congress fails to hold the Fauci clique accountable, and fails to reform public health agencies, we will be giving far-left bureaucrats a blank check to shut the country down whenever they want," Banks said. "We need to send a message that the restrictions, the mandates and the school closures can never happen again."

Republicans are likely to take back the House and gain what Banks has claimed will be a "historic majority." As the RSC is the largest ideological congressional caucus, Banks' memo may be a preview into GOP actions after midterms.

"Holding partisan public health bureaucrats accountable should be a major oversight priority for House Republicans after 2022," he wrote in the 4-page RSC memo.

"Leftists have abused Americans’ willingness to make sacrifices for public health. They have sought to define everything from racism to policing to gun rights to the minimum wage as public health issues," he noted. 

Republicans plan on reigning in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "mission creep" by refocusing the agency on emergency public health response and requiring it to "be transparent," among other things.

The GOP will also consider restoring the basic science mission at the National Institutes of Health, which oversees Dr. Fauci and his National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases department.

The RSC is looking at "capping indirect costs could ensure such funds aren’t funneled to politically favored woke institutions" through the NIH and implementing "policies to ensure American research dollars don’t go to Chinese Communist Party companies, the Russian Federation, and other adversarial nations."

Banks wrote that "many Americans realized the Left had twisted the term 'public health' into a catch-all for leftist policies that limited their basics liberties."

The memo concludes by stating that the CDC and NIH "have been influenced by an ideological public health academia and advance the Left’s war on American culture," advising conservatives to "root out this institutional rot" at the federal agencies.