USAID Funding for Wuhan Lab and Federal Spending Transparency

By law, all federal spending is required to be publicly available on usaspending.gov.

We've known for a while that Dr. Fauci used NIH funding to finance bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But it took the watchdog White Coat Waste Project to expose evidence that USAID was funding it too. In fact, the bulk of the money came from USAID. Yet no grants to the Chinese lab appeared on

usaspending.gov. It was hidden from the public through layers of unreported sub-grants and sub-awards. Thankfully, my push to defund EcoHealth Alliance was successful, and the group is now barred from receiving US government grants. But this is why my TRACKS Act must become law. To prevent money being sent to China, the

Taliban, or any other foreign adversary, every grant recipient must be disclosed to ensure accountability, and we shouldn't stop there. My bipartisan Stop Secret Spending Act, introduced with Ranking Member Peters, would add additional transparency to federal spending. So Mr. Schellenberger, I'll start with you,

please. Why is USAID so secretive about how it spends billions of taxpayer dollars?

Is it to avoid the public outrage over the waste, or is there something more nefarious there?

Well, thank you, Senator. And first of all, thank you for your leadership in bringing transparency and accountability to aid and, and the funding there.

Obviously, your-- this example you just gave of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is incredible. I mean, the fact it appears that the US government funded the creation of the virus that called the-- caused the global pandemic-