Welcome to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Washington D.C. — House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) released this statement following the Supreme Court’s decision in Ohio v. EPA : “The Supreme Court made the right decision to stay enforcement of the Biden EPA’s harmful rule and to allow completion of judicial review. This decision relieves states of the tremendous costs and harms from complying with a rule that is likely to be overturned. The compliance burdens this rule requires threaten to further undermine electric reliability and raise utility bills for Americans. The agency clearly overstepped its statutory authority to usurp states’ responsibilities for putting together emissions plans to address their responsibilities to neighboring states. I hope this decision compels President Biden to reverse course on his radical rush-to-green agenda and start working with states to bring more reliable, affordable power online, not less.” CLICK HERE to read about Chair Rodgers's April 2024 amicus brief with Senators Capito and Wicker. 

Washington D.C. —  House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) issued the following statement regarding the American Privacy Rights Act : “For every parent, for individual liberty, and for the future of this country, we will continue our pursuit to give Americans privacy rights online. “Everyone knows someone who has suffered because of the current state of the online ecosystem. It is happening with alarming frequency, especially to our children. The American people are exhausted, anxious, and losing hope with the status quo. “At its core, the massive commercial surveillance of data is fueling the problem. Nearly every data point imaginable is being collected on us with no accountability. They are using our data against us, sowing division, manipulating truth, and diminishing our personal identities. “We cannot continue down this path. The American people are asking Congress to step up and pass a privacy bill. It is foundational to our future and the next generation. “Today, I’m calling for all moms, dads, and freedom-loving Americans to join me in this fight."

Washington D.C. —  House Energy and Commerce Innovation, Data, and Commerce Subcommittee Chair Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) delivered the following opening remarks at today’s subcommittee  hearing  titled “The Fiscal Year 2025 Department of Commerce Budget.”  DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE MUST STRENGTHEN U.S. COMPETITIVENESS “I would like to welcome everyone to today’s hearing where we will be examining and discussing the Department of Commerce’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request.  “I want to thank Secretary Raimondo for appearing before us and look forward to conducting important Congressional oversight of this agency as we look to fund ways to strengthen our economy and compete on the global stage.  “This Committee has been active on both of these fronts.  “Last month, the House passed H.R. 6571, the Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act, led by Reps. Bucshon and Blunt Rochester, which would establish a mapping program at the Department of Commerce to examine our supply chains to better prepare our economy for any future shocks that we may see.  “Monitoring these trends will help protect us from reliance on our nation’s enemies and instead help industries to adapt quickly.  “The Department would also be tasked with partnering with the private sector to better understand vulnerabilities in our supply chains, including supply chains for emerging technologies, and provide recommendations for promoting emerging technologies and making critical supply chains more resilient and closer to home.  “Secretary Raimondo, thank you for being here before us to discuss these issues.”  SECURING AMERICAN SUPPLY CHAINS   “I’m interested to hear from you on these supply chain issues, as well as the state of our country’s global competition with China, and the status of our travel and tourism sector.  “Last Congress, we worked on a bipartisan basis with Rep. Schakowsky to pass the Restoring Brand USA Act and the Visit America Act to ensure the U.S. remains a top destination for visitors around the globe, and that we have oversight mechanisms and a plan in place at Commerce to prepare the nation for the next decade in travel and tourism trends.  “I am concerned that the U.S. is starting to lag behind other top nations in the travel sector, and I look forward to discussing ways to modernize and advance our nation’s tourism priorities through your Department by reducing red tape and bureaucratic barriers and instead embrace the power of our private sector and our great local economies.”  ENABLING ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES   “Lastly, I hope to be able to discuss the continued importance of American leadership in emerging technologies, such as blockchain, A.I., and quantum computing.  “Our Subcommittee has again conducted bipartisan work on these topics, including passing H.R. 6572, the Deploying American Blockchains Act, in May, which will direct the Department of Commerce to take action in promoting U.S. competitiveness in the deployment and use of blockchain technologies.  “We cannot cede American leadership in these fields, and it is critical that we continue to employ new strategies that let innovators thrive here in the United States.  “That also includes the critical infrastructure manufacturing necessary to develop these emerging technologies.  “Rep. Miller Meeks’ bill that we passed would do just that by finding pathways to increase our capacity for domestic manufacturing, reducing barriers to entry, and becoming less reliant on countries like China for critical components necessary for these innovations to continue.  “With all of these pieces of legislation I hope we can get those past the Senate and across the finish line to the President’s desk.  “Secretary Raimondo, I look forward to hearing from you about how we can align these goals, secure American leadership, reduce red tape for industry stakeholders—we cannot let a ‘top-down’ approach get in the way and hope that we can instead let the American innovative economy thrive.  “The Budget needs to reflect these key priorities without breaking the bank, and I am interested to hear your perspective.” 

Washington, D.C. — In a new letter to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Subcommittee on Health Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY), and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA) are pressing for more information regarding the agency’s foreign drug inspection program. The letter continues the Committee’s investigation into FDA inspection practices, which include a July 18, 2023, letter , a December 13, 2023, letter , and a February 6, 2024, oversight hearing at which the FDA declined to make an official available to testify.  BACKGROUND :  In the letter, the Members discuss the Committee’s analysis of FDA inspection outcomes in India and China from January 2014 to April 2024, limiting its review to inspectors with ten or more inspections in either China or India.   EXCERPT OF THE ANALYSIS :  “The results of this analysis were surprising, revealing tremendous variation in inspection outcomes. Some FDA inspectors found compliance issues during all or almost all of their inspections. Other inspectors rarely reported finding a single compliance issue. Two inspectors never found a single compliance issue over the course of a combined 24 inspections in India. Another inspector found zero compliance issues in 20 out of 23 inspections (85 percent) in China while finding compliance issues with almost half of domestic inspections during the same period. These are unusual inspection outcomes, the opposite of what would be expected given the widely reported failures in quality control and lack of adherence to current good manufacturing techniques by drug manufacturing facilities in China and India.  “By contrast, 16 FDA inspectors, with over 325 inspections collectively in India, found compliance issues during every inspection they conducted. As a measure of what a pattern of rigorous inspections should look like, the Committee reviewed the inspection outcomes for 3 FDA inspectors with professional reputations for thoroughness who also had at least 10 inspections in China or India during the studied time period. These expert inspectors reported finding no compliance issues during inspections in China at a rate of only 6.7 to 11.4 percent and at a rate of zero to 9.5 percent in India.”  KEY LETTER EXCERPT : “Such large variations in inspection outcomes are troubling, and they merit further investigation. At a minimum, the Committee is concerned that these findings suggest vast differences in the skill, thoroughness, and competence of FDA inspectors. The difference in inspection outcomes appears to be just another example of institutional weaknesses and dysfunction in the FDA’s foreign drug inspection program. Prior to the pandemic, media reporting found that some FDA inspectors took an inappropriately lenient approach with foreign drug manufacturers with serious compliance violations. There were also reports o f, and concerns about, foreign manufacturers attempting to bribe or improperly influence inspectors. The Committee is seriously evaluating the disturbing possibility that some of the variation in inspection outcomes could be the result of bribery or fraud.”  CLICK HERE to read the full letter. 

Washington, D.C. —  In a new letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Subcommittee on Health Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY), and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA) request information regarding HHS’s suspension and debarment process.  The letter also provides direct evidence refuting Secretary Becerra’s testimony to the Health Subcommittee asserting that HHS “will take immediate action” to stop sexual abusers from receiving taxpayer funding. It comes amid the Committee’s ongoing investigation into sexual harassment at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and at NIH grantee institutions.  KEY LETTER EXCERPT :  “At the April 17, 2024, hearing before the Subcommittee on Health, in response to a question about the redactions of names of confirmed abusers or harassers, you said: ‘If there is an abuser that is receiving taxpayer dollars from the Department of Health and Human Services, . . . in this particular case the National Institutes of Health [NIH], we will take action immediately.’    “ However, your claim is belied by the facts. Based on subpoenaed NIH documents reviewed in camera, Committee staff discovered that an individual who served as principal investigator on at least 24 NIH-grants was not suspended or debarred from receiving federal funding despite his conviction in 2021 of sexual abuse and his medical license being stripped . Based on documentation reviewed during the Committee’s in camera review of sexual misconduct allegations on NIH-funded research, staff found that in September 2020, the NIH recommended to HHS an immediate federal-wide suspension and debarment of this abuser for 10 years based on the abuser’s indictment in 2019 on three counts of sexual abuse, and the grantee institution’s determination that the individual was responsible for sexual harassment in January of 2020. Despite this recommendation from the NIH, followed by the individual’s conviction in December 2021, HHS has taken no action. Three and a half years later, this abuser remains eligible for federal funding. On April 15, 2024, Committee staff sent an email to HHS staff requesting information about the status and handling of this matter. HHS has not yet responded.”  [...]  “ We are troubled by the limited use of suspensions and debarments from awarding agencies within HHS along with the timeliness issues and lack of use of suspensions pre-debarment raised by the HHS OIG. Harassers and abusers with public reporting of their actions, and even some with criminal convictions, are not present on SAM.gov as suspended or debarred .”  BACKGROUND : HHS is the largest grantmaking agency in the federal government—awarding over $778 billion in grants in fiscal year 2023.  Federal suspension and debarment programs help to protect the integrity of federal grant programs by ensuring the federal government does business only with responsible persons.  Individuals or parties receiving grants can be suspended or debarred from continuing to receive federal grants if they lack honesty, integrity, or business performance.  Within HHS, a suspension or debarment action may be initiated from an awarding agency—such as the NIH—or another entity—such as the Office of Inspector General (OIG).     Referrals for suspension or debarment are sent to the HHS Office of Recipient Integrity Coordination (ORIC) for review and final decision by the Suspension and Debarment Official (SDO).  Referrals can be conviction-based—originating from a criminal conviction or civil judgement—or fact-based—in which the referring office builds a case based on facts (e.g., audit findings or failures to disclose).  Suspensions and debarments are not retrospective, meaning respondents can maintain their current award(s), but it does prevent them from receiving new federal awards.   Not only are these suspensions and debarments valid within the referring agency, but they also generally make a respondent ineligible for awards from other federal departments.   Suspended or debarred parties or individuals are listed on SAM.gov and awarding departments can check this list before awarding grants to prevent awarding grants to these parties or individuals.   While federal departments have discretion as to when to refer a respondent for suspension or debarment, HHS—and particularly awarding agencies such as the NIH—can prevent known harassers or abusers from receiving additional federal awards across the federal government through these processes.   However, a 2022 HHS OIG report found several concerns during its audit of HHS’s suspension and debarment processes.  HHS OIG found that 84 percent of referrals came from non-awarding agencies—such as the OIG or Office of Research Integrity—rather than those offices charged with supervising ongoing grants.  This statistic raised concerns for the OIG about the extent to which awarding agencies were doing enough to identify and take action against bad actors and if agencies are missing opportunities for additional suspension and debarment referrals.  Another concern is the timeliness of the HHS suspension and debarment process and the limited use of suspensions during pending debarment proceedings.   The HHS OIG found that nearly half of suspensions implemented by ORIC did not meet its 60-day goal, with several suspensions taking longer than 300 days to implement.  Of the 134 debarments that ORIC implemented, nearly all involved grants, yet less than one-third of these debarments included a preceding suspension.  That means more than two-thirds of respondents may have maintained access to additional federal funding during the debarment process, with the longest case taking 1251 days or nearly three and a half years.  Moreover, for conviction-based debarments—in which the evidentiary threshold has generally already been met by the conviction or judgment—75 percent of conviction-based debarments implemented by ORIC did not meet its 100-day goal.  Rather, implementation took an average of 325 days and nearly a quarter of these debarments took over 500 days to be implemented.  The HHS OIG found numerous areas in which the timeliness, efficiency and effectiveness of HHS’s suspension and debarment program were negatively affected by internal factors.   Specifically, there is a very high turnover rate at both the staff and senior leadership levels of the suspension and debarment program, with ORIC’s full staffing levels being four personnel.  Moreover, seven different people served as HHS’s SDO—the official determining if suspension or debarment is to be implemented—in just four years.  With this kind of turnover, cases may fall through the cracks or be heavily delayed.   Moreover, HHS OIG found that a lack of policies and procedures regarding entering and tracking important case information and milestones plus a lack of guidance on what information is needed in fact-based referrals has limited the ability to suspend or debar individuals.  Specifically, ORIC was not able to suspend or debar several individuals due to a lack of documentation in the referral that showed a referring entity followed its own corrective-action escalation process prior to the suspension or debarment.  CLICK HERE to read the full letter.  TIMELINE OF INVESTIGATION:   August 10, 2021 : E&C Republican Leaders Question NIH’s Handling of Sexual Harassment Complaints    August 11, 2022 : E&C Republican Leaders follow up with NIH on Insufficient Response to its Letter on the NIH’s handling of Sexual Harassment    November 30, 2022 : E&C Republicans to NIH: Turn Over Previously Requested Information Ahead of New Congress    March 14, 2023 : E&C Republicans Press NIH for Information on Handling of Sexual Harassment Complaints    October 6, 2023 : E&C Republicans Signal Intent to Issue Subpoena to Obtain Information on NIH’s Handling of Sexual Harassment if Questions Go Unanswered    January 26, 2024 : Chair Rogers notifies NIH of Imminent Subpoena    February 5, 2024 : Chair Rodgers Subpoenas NIH for Documents Related to Investigation into Sexual Harassment at NIH and NIH Grantee Institutions   February 20, 2024 : HHS Responds on behalf of NIH to offer a rolling in camera document review to the Committee. Documents produced in the review have been highly redacted, including the redaction of the names of individuals convicted of criminal offenses, public news articles about individuals who have been found guilty of harassment, and redaction of the names of the institutions where the abuse occurred—effectively preventing the Committee from understanding if NIH continues to fund work performed by substantiated abusers at other institutions—a practice known as “pass the harasser.”   April 16, 2024 : E&C Republicans Expand Investigation into Sexual Harassment at NIH to now Include Review of HHS Office of Civil Rights Compliance Role  May 9, 2024 : E&C Republicans ask Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to provide the Committee with the legal basis requiring HHS to redact or hide the names of researchers determined to have committed sexual misconduct. 

Washington D.C. — House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member John Barrasso (R-WY) sent a letter to Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Jennifer Granholm following reports that the Biden administration is preparing to further drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The letter calls on the Secretary to safeguard the SPR and stop using it to provide political cover for President Biden in an election year. KEY LETTER EXCERPT: “ Under President Biden, the SPR has reached its lowest level since 1983. The DOE has overseen the largest sale in history, amounting to a total of 290 million barrels. When President Biden took office in January 2021, the SPR contained 638 million barrels of oil. Today, the SPR currently contains 367 million barrels of oil, which represents nearly a 42 percent decline from when President Biden took office.”  […] “Under the Biden administration, the SPR has been abused for political purposes to try and bring down record high gasoline prices that are driving record high inflation that are a consequence of the administration’s radical rush to 'green' energy policies. In November of 2021, the Biden administration announced a release, in coordination with China, in an attempt to lower prices. Then in March of 2022, the president announced the release of 180 million barrels of oil from the SPR in the middle of an election year, a transparent attempt to influence the midterm elections and distract from the Biden administration’s energy policy failures.”  [...] “We urge you, in the strongest terms, to put this country’s energy security first and stop abusing the SPR for political purposes. As the Secretary of Energy, it is your responsibility to ensure that the SPR is ready to respond to true energy supply disruptions.” CLICK HERE to read the full letter. CLICK HERE to read Chair Rodgers and Ranking Member Barrasso’s letter in November 2022 detailing the damage from President Biden’s SPR drawdowns. CLICK HERE to read Chair Rodgers’s statement on the House’s passage of H.R. 21, the Strategic Production Response Act , which would help ensure the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is available during a true energy emergency and not abused for non-emergency, political purposes.