Ernst bill would defund EcoHealth Alliance, other orgs that 'disregard the law'

EXCLUSIVE: Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa aims to strip taxpayer funding from EcoHealth Alliance and other nonprofits that "disregard the law." 

Ernst will introduce the Stop the Outlay of Payments (STOP) Act Tuesday, which would cut off all federal funding to any organization that has had a federal award suspended or terminated by an agency of the federal government. Her office said the legislation targets EcoHealth, a controversial New York City-based nonprofit with ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). 

"Like China, EcoHealth will not cooperate with scientific investigations into the origins of COVID-19, and, as a result, we may never know what was happening inside the Wuhan Institute and the possible connection to the pandemic. It makes me sick that Iowa taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill for organizations like EcoHealth that refuse to be accountable and transparent," Ernst told Fox News Digital.

EcoHealth, an environmental group that works to prevent the outbreak of emerging diseases, is under intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers for its relationship to WIV in Wuhan, China, which was the recipient of $600,000 in federal tax dollars subawarded by EcoHealth to research coronaviruses in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and other GOP lawmakers have alleged that risky research conducted at the Wuhan lab on the taxpayer's dime may be connected to the origins of the pandemic. Federal health officials have disputed this claim, showing that the viruses studied under the terms of EcoHealth's grant "were so far distant from an evolutionary standpoint from SARS-CoV-2 that they could not have possibly been the source of SARS-CoV-2 or the COVID-19 pandemic." 

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General rebuked the group in a January report that found EcoHealth failed to ensure that its subawards were compliant with federal regulations, including monitoring and reporting requirements for subrecipients like the WIV — though EcoHealth disputed some of the findings. 

Ernst's office accused EcoHealth of engaging in a pattern of stonewalling oversight bodies at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and repeatedly violating federal laws and regulations, citing the Inspector General's report and a letter from the NIH. Noting EcoHealth has been given more than $40 million in taxpayer dollars, Ernst has spearheaded legislation that would defund the nonprofit. 

Her bill, the STOP Act, would give grant recipients 120 days to come into compliance after being suspended and would permit them to receive support from other grants if an agreement has been made to resolve the suspension of the grant. 

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"No one should be above the law and those taking money from taxpayers have an obligation to justify why and how it was spent," Ernst said. "Organizations shouldn’t be able to cherry-pick which laws they follow, especially not while operating on the taxpayers’ dime. The STOP Act is critical to my efforts to provide Americans with answers while barring bad actors from getting their next payout." 

When reached for comment, an EcoHealth Alliance spokesperson pushed back on the accusations and accused Ernst of targeted political action against the group "based on misinformation and faulty assumptions." 

"The Senator’s claims about EcoHealth Alliance’s alleged failure to share information about the subawards to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) are simply not true — we filed regular progress reports on the research, including the activities of WIV, with the NIH and were in regular contact with our NIAID program officers. The results of this research were published in dozens of reports in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and virus sequences were uploaded into the NIH Genbank database, where they were available for independent scrutiny by all. Additionally, we have been working actively with one committee in the Senate and two Congressional committees to supply documents, information and interviews regarding our prior work in China," the spokesperson said. 

EcoHealth further accused Ernst of mischaracterizing the findings of the HHS Inspector General, stating that the group "follows all guidelines for Federal grants, and is fully in compliance with each of the grants and contracts it is currently managing." 

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"This was confirmed in the OIG audit, which did not find significant issues with EcoHealth Alliance's Federal grant oversight and compliance," the spokesperson said.

EcoHealth also denied supporting gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab and condemned Ernst's bill.

"Senator Ernst’s proposed legislation would seriously undermine the tradition of independent peer review and the procedures that NIH already has in place to ensure that grantees conduct important research in the nation’s interest, use grant funds appropriately, and share their significant results with the world in a transparent way," the spokesperson said.

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The spokesperson added, "These existing policies and procedures have made NIH the leading biomedical research agency in the world. Congress, through its funding and oversight of the NIH over many decades, can be proud of the role it has played in building this asset — but political interference in the funding decisions of the agency jeopardize this tradition of research excellence, which has yielded such important results for the health of the American people."