Here we go again. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), part of Health and Human Services (HHS), is once again in the news. You’d think in this post-Covid world, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra would be doing his best to keep his head down and his agency from the public’s attention. Instead, thanks to the House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce, the NIH and Becerra find themselves at the center of a controversy that includes the re-appointment of Dr. Anthony Fauci and a number of other NIH Directors and billions in federal biomedical grants.

This includes Dr. Fauci—the highest paid federal employee—who served unlawfully & without a proper appointment from Dec 2021 to his retirement.

It was during this time that he awarded a new grant to EcoHealth Alliance, despite scrutiny of risky research it facilitated in China.

— CathyMcMorrisRodgers (@cathymcmorris) July 9, 2023

If true, this failure means more than $24 billion in biomedical grants handed out in 2022 could be cast into doubt through no fault of those applying for the money. They acted in good faith. They, along with the rest of our country, assumed the NIH and HHS leadership followed the rules. Instead, whether through negligence or conscious thought, if the House committee is right, more than a dozen of these  NIH directors were not re-appointed in accordance to the law.

And billions of taxpayer dollars were given away as a result.

Under the 21st  Century Cures Act, passed in 2016, the Secretary of HHS is required “to reappoint NIH IC Directors, including those who were serving at the time of the law’s enactment when their five-year terms expired on December 12, 2021.” According to the letter sent to Secretary Beccera, the Act requires him, as the head of HHS, to “appoint and reappoint” the directors on December 13, 2021. Further, the committee puts forth the belief that the process set forth by the Act was not followed, even after inquiries were made. 

Now, the Biden Administration has already begun its song and dance to deny the allegations. No big surprise there. After all, it has proven time and again that it won’t tolerate anything that might tarnish the name of St. Fauci. According to someone within the HHS who is supposedly “familiar” with the situation–and who also spoke to the media while demanding anonymity–the Committee is “misrepresenting the requirements.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have real problems when folks within any Administration, but especially this one, speaks only on the condition of anonymity. What they are basically saying is that we have to trust what they say and trust that they are in a position to actually have knowledge about what they’re saying without any way to vet the truth of their statements. Nope, sorry, that doesn’t fly.

According to the Biden Administration, the Act was followed because:

The law says that they must be “appointed by the Secretary, acting through the Director of the National Institutes of Health.”

The specific language of the law is:

A Director of a national research institute or national center who is appointed by the Secretary, acting through the Director of National Institutes of Health, shall be appointed for 5 years.

Reading the entire sentence, the emphasis is a bit different from what the Administration wants us to believe.

Now, if the Administration felt confident about its stance, why did Secretary Becerra sign “affidavits the department says retroactively ratified and adopted the appointments”? By the way, these affidavits were not signed until June 2023, six months after they appointments and reappointments should have been made by Secretary Becerra.

Oops?

And it’s not as if Becerra and company weren’t made aware of the Committee’s concerns. In March 2022, the Committee sent a letter to HHS and NIH that the appointments had not been made in compliance with the Act. According to the latest letter to Becerra, all that happened after that was “HHS and the NIH repeatedly misled the Committee.”

The letter also notes that the “intentional misstatements or omissions” may constitute “federal criminal violations under 18 USC 1001,” adding that it serves as a formal request to preserve “all existing and future records.”

But the Administration says there’s nothing to look at here. It’s all a mistake. How long before they say it’s yet another witch hunt by Republicans?

I never thought I’d agree with Fauci on anything, but his comments here bear consideration.

Let’s see. How many of his concerns fall right into the lap of the Biden Administration?

Normalization of untruths? Yep.

Distortion of reality? Yep.

Outright fabrication? Oh yeah (can you say Hunter Biden?)

Lying? Yep

Conspiracy theories? (Trump still lives rent free in their heads and he’s responsible for everything, at least in their minds)

I would add one more concern: the cooperation of the media to help cover up, divert attention from, or the outright denial of stories that paint the Administration in a negative light. The Committee’s letter to Secretary Becerra and the lack of coverage last night is a perfect example. As of 11 PM Central, when I searched for coverage of the Committee’s letter to Secretary Becerra, there was almost no coverage found.

I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not.

How many taxpayer dollars will be spent investigating what happened? How many research dollars were handed out that might not have been–or that might have gone to other applicants–had the rules actually been followed?

When will the media, and that part of the voting public that keeps putting Biden and those like him in office, realize that this sort of irresponsible (or negligent) behavior comes from the top? If we had a president and vice president who set a strong example of following the rules and respecting the law and the Constitution, those agency and department heads would be more likely to do so as well.

One more interesting note the Administration would like us to forget: there hasn’t been a Director of NIH since December 2021. Five months later, Biden said he would appoint the head of NIH’s National Cancer Institute to the position. Guess what? Good ole Bernie Sanders is holding up the vote on the nomination for his own reasons. So, apparently, Becerra and the Administration wants us to accept their argument that a stand-in should have been enough to make the appointments and re-appointments as required by the Act.

And they wonder why so many of us cringe whenever we hear anything about HHS or NIH, especially after Covid.

Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Featured Image: Anthony Fauci caricature by DonkeyHotey. Creative Commons 2.0 license.