Rep. Tom Tiffany, along with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has introduced legislation aiming to block President Joe Biden from agreeing to an upcoming World Health Organization pandemic accord, tells Newsmax that the bill is an important push back against the "COVID cartel."
"What it says is that any agreement that is struck with the World Health Organization regarding pandemic action must be treated as a treaty, and then it takes a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate in order for it to be ratified," the Wisconsin Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
According to the WHO, countries that are part of the organization earlier this month started negotiations for a global accord concerning pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response as an effort to protect nations from future pandemics.
Governments agreed during the World Health Assembly in late 2021 to produce a final draft of the accord by the 77th World Health Assembly in 2024.
But Tiffany on Newsmax Thursday said the news that has surfaced about the WHO and people who agree with a Department of Energy report blaming the COVID-19 pandemic on a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology point to the need for the United States to handle its pandemic preparedness.
He added that Taiwan, at the end of 2019, warned the WHO that there may have been a leak in Wuhan, but the organization "ignored Taiwan."
"Why would we turn over our pandemic policy unilaterally to the World Health Organization?" he said. "It makes no sense. That's why we need this bill to pass … it's bad medicine that the Biden administration is trying to give the American people."
The WHO accord, if approved, could also force countries to shut down in the event of another pandemic, as the organization suggested in 2020 over COVID, Tiffany further said.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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