Comer Probes Biden-Harris Administration’s Scientific Integrity Committees for Enabling Bureaucratic Overreach and Weaponization
WASHINGTON—House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) is investigating the Biden-Harris Administration’s government-wide scientific integrity committees that are politicizing science and empowering federal bureaucrats to dictate agency policy. In letters to the heads of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Chairman Comer requests information to assist with the Committee’s investigation and ensure continued accountability within the Executive Branch.
“The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the Biden-Harris Administration’s establishment of government-wide scientific integrity committees with possible intent to interfere with the executive authority of future presidential administrations. Policymaking by the administrative state should be informed by scientific evidence—including views that challenge the existing consensus—and accountable to the American people and their elected leadership, not beholden to career bureaucrats implementing their own agendas,” wrote Chairman Comer. “Yet the regime implemented by the Biden-Harris Administration is likely to entrench the status quo without regard to scientific advances while enhancing the power of unelected federal officials to influence or stymie policy decisions.”
The Biden-Harris Administration issued a Presidential Memorandum directing the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to establish a Task Force on Scientific Integrity and publish a report on federal agencies’ scientific-integrity policies. In this memorandum, each agency head was directed to establish agency-specific scientific integrity policies, designate chief science officers and scientific integrity officials, and form scientific advisory committees. The memorandum’s approach risks politicizing science by increasing political involvement in processes and improperly empowering federal bureaucrats to dictate ultimate agency policy.
“It is likely that the goal of these scientific integrity efforts is less to ensure the best science is considered when making policy decisions and more to buttress support for and entrench far-left progressive policies in the administrative state,” continued Chairman Comer. “Indeed, recent reporting indicates that the Biden-Harris Administration is using ‘scientific integrity’ to proactively respond to and hamstring the incoming Trump Administration’s ability to implement its own executive agendas and discredit scientific information and views that are not in keeping with the mainstream consensus or are based on emerging research challenging the status quo.”
Read the letters here: