Covid-19 Origin Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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Mr. BRAUN. Thank you, Senator Hawley.
This was an easy one. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal gave us some news. We have had a cascade of others weighing in now, where this is maybe an epiphany that some have had that we need to look further into the roots.
Look at what our country has gone through. It has been a year and a quarter, and it has ravaged not only the United States but the world. And why, for the sake of simple transparency, wouldn't we want to get to the root cause of it?
The World Health Organization made an attempt at it. It was not effective. It looked to me like it was apologizing for what might have occurred in China.
President Biden finally has said that we need to put more light and attention on this. So thank goodness, for whatever the reason, we are going to get to the bottom of it. When it has caused this much grief across our country and across the world, it needs to be done.
The intelligence communities in our own country are storing information that needs to be revealed to the American public. It needs to be revealed to anyone who can look at it to make sense out of what has happened.
So our bill is very simple.
Since I have been in the Senate, whether it is weighing in on issues of healthcare, national security, COVID-19--who disagrees with transparency, the sunshine that reveals everything?
I was in a committee hearing. And when you get the two individuals whom we have relied on mostly in this whole journey, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins, first acknowledging that transparency is paramount, and that, yes, we should declassify this information, and when we have listened to them help navigate us through this tricky journey, and they tell us earlier today, ``Give us the information,'' I think that is why here, this evening, this will go through with unanimous consent, because it makes sense.
And wherever it leads us, we should be happy that we finally might get to the bottom of this--whatever it reveals. We don't know where it will take us. It is relying on what is most important--on the information we housed. Let's make sure the American public can see it and that any group that wants to analyze what happened can, including the rest of the world.
So it was easy for me to get onboard, to get behind something so simple that says nothing more than if we got the information, let's show it. Let's not hide behind it. And when you get individuals like Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, the director now of the WHO, something is afoot, and we need to find out.
I am glad that we are here this evening punctuating this so that we get it done.
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