Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) is advancing new efforts to prevent U.S. taxpayer spending on COVID-19 tests and other medical equipment from reaching China.
“We don’t want the Biden administration sending any more money to China, for COVID tests or anything else, for that matter,” Ms. Harshbarger told NTD’s “Capitol Report” on Thursday.
Last week, the Tennessee Republican filed a bill to formally prohibit the use of U.S. federal funds to purchase at-home test kits from certain foreign entities.
The bill comes amid ongoing concerns over U.S. reliance on Chinese goods; a concern which came to a head during the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic as countries struggled for access to personal protective equipment (PPE) and kits used to test for COVID-19 infections.
“When they issued in N95 masks to the members of Congress, and we had to wear them on the floor, right on the side it said ‘Made in China,’ and I thought, ‘well, this is not good,'” Ms. Harshbarger said, recounting the early days of the pandemic.
While concerns about COVID-19 have largely subsided, politicians and policymakers on both sides of the political aisle have called for new efforts to de-risk U.S.-China relations and reroute critical supply chains through more trusted allies and partner nations.
“We need to prioritize American manufacturing,” Ms. Harshbarger said Thursday. “And I’ve said this since I’ve been here: If we can do it here in America, we need to do it. If we can’t, we need to contract with allied countries who have our best interest at heart.”
Ms. Harshbarger has even placed some U.S. entities under suspicion. Last month, she and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), scrutinizing $600 million in contracts the department had awarded to 12 U.S.-based entities to purchase new COVID-19 testing kits.
The Republican lawmakers wrote while the 12 contract awardees are listed as U.S. entities, many actually have foreign ownership, and “at least one is a Chinese company—and likely at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party,” though the two Republicans did not identify the specified companies by name in their Nov. 7 letter.
“Even though they may say they’re American companies, if you look deep enough, you’re going to find that there are ties to China,” Ms. Harshbarger told “Capitol Report”.
“Why would we send an adversarial nation our hard-earned taxpayer money when all we get is lies?”
Backing GOP Border Security Demands
Ms. Harshbarger said she’s heartened by an increasingly bipartisan view that U.S.-China relations carry risks and that Democrats agree with some efforts to reduce those risks by on-shoring key industries.
“Some [Democrats] are absolutely, and they do agree that advanced manufacturing in America is an answer,” she said. “You know, we have the only plant in the country that produces penicillin, and that’s in my district. That’s a model. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We can incentivize these companies to manufacture right here in our own country, and we need to do that. That’s critical.”
Other issues involving China may be more contentious, such as the number of Chinese nationals that have crossed the U.S. southern border in recent months and how lawmakers may contend with that issue.
Ms. Harshbarger said the Chinese nationals crossing the U.S. border pose an added risk of diseases as China is dealing with a new pneumonia-like outbreak.
Republicans have been seeking tighter restrictions on the U.S. asylum process and the rules governing temporary U.S. entry for border crossers and are currently tying such demands to ongoing deliberations over a $111 billion supplemental spending bill that provides tens of billions in new U.S. spending for Ukraine.
Democratic lawmakers have been reluctant to grant those Republican border security demands and have argued the contentious issue risks slowing aid to Ukraine at a crucial time in their war with Russia.
Mr. Harshbarger defended the Republican negotiating tactics and said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) “has to stick to his guns with that because we have a problem.”