Ernst, Stefanik Expose Tax Dollars to China

Tracks $18 million Biden gave Beijing for everything from a bakery roadshow to DEI trainings.
WASHINGTON – As hardworking Americans report and pay taxes on every dollar earned under the threat of an audit, this Tax Day, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) are forcing Washington to live by the same rules when sending tax dollars to China.
After exposing that the Biden administration sent more than$18 millionto China for everything from a bakery roadshow to DEI trainings, the lawmakers are introducing a new bill to require every penny sent to foreign adversaries be publicly disclosed.
“Americans should never send a cent to China,”said Ernst.“But you cannot stop what you cannot see. I am exposing every single tax dollar sent overseas to scrutinize and halt all wasteful spending.”
“My legislation will ensure hardworking taxpayer dollars are not funding our adversaries including Communist China as they work against American interests,”said Stefanik.“The days of poor stewardship over American dollars under the Biden Administration are long gone as House Republicans join President Trump in his efforts of rooting out government waste, fraud, and abuse.”
While most of the $18 million sent to China was publicly disclosed, more than $4 million sent by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was not, and aGovernment Accountability Office(GAO) audit confirmed that not all money being sent to China is being publicly disclosed.
To ensure that the American people know how their money is spent, Ernst and Stefanik are introducing theTracking Receipts to Adversarial Countries for Knowledge of Spending (TRACKS) Actto require every penny sent to foreign adversaries or entities of particular concern, such as terrorist groups including the Taliban, to be accounted for and disclosed to the public for scrutiny.
Background:
Ernst has long fought to stop tax dollars from being sent overseas for risky research.
An Ernst-requestedinvestigation exposedhow EcoHealth sent over $1 million U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for risky experiments on bat coronaviruses. She alsosecuredanauditby the Department of Defense’s Inspector General of risky research in China paid for by the Pentagon andhidden from the public.
She led the charge to permanentlydebarthe Wuhan Institute of Virology anddefundEcoHealth Alliance from receiving U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Ernsteffortsalso led to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) defunding EcoHealth and promising to cut off any taxpayer dollars used for research of pandemic potential.
In her$2 trillion blueprintto slash waste in Washington, Ernst pointed to the millions being sent to China for secretive risky research.
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