U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced a bill to move up the date by which the position of Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) becomes a Senate-approved position.
Currently, the CDC Director is directly appointed by the president without Senate confirmation, but the position is scheduled to become a Senate-confirmed position starting in January 2025.
Sen. Cruz’s bill, the CDC Accountability Act, would make this position Senate confirmable immediately upon enactment of the bill, allowing Senators the opportunity to properly vet and examine the next CDC Director.
About the bill, Cruz said, “As we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic, public health officials have an incredible amount of power over the lives of Texans and Americans. Mandy Cohen was a driving force behind lockdowns and forced masking in North Carolina.
Taking advantage of a pandemic to push government control over our daily lives shouldn’t be rewarded with a promotion. Texas deserves a say in who leads national healthcare conversations, and my bill would simply speed the process that Congress has already put in place, by giving the Senate a say in this important decision now instead of 2025.”
Sens. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Mike Braun (R-Indiana) joined as co-sponsors.
Schmitt said, “The Administrative State has gone unchecked for too long, and unelected bureaucrats have far too much power over the lives of Americans - the CDC is the epitome of that unchecked power,” said Schmitt. “The Senate should absolutely be required to vote on any nominee for CDC director and bringing that power back to the Article I branch, the peoples’ branch, is paramount. We need deep structural reform, and this bill contributes to that reform.”
Braun said, “The COVID pandemic vastly expanded the powers of the CDC director over our lives, from controlling when our kids went back to school to whether or not you had to pay your rent. Ideally this position should not have that much power, but in the meantime this incredibly powerful bureaucratic position should be confirmed by the people’s representatives in the Senate.”
President Biden plans to appoint former North Carolina healthcare secretary Mandy Cohen to serve as CDC director. Sen. Cruz and members of the North Carolina congressional delegation wrote a letter earlier this month labeling Cohen “unfit for the position” due to her role in shutting down North Carolina during the Covid-19 pandemic, and forcing indoor masking of schoolchildren.
Cruz has led the fight againstgovernmentoverreach due to the Covid-19 pandemic thus far by introducing legislation to get people and students back to work and in schools, prohibiting federal vaccine mandates and tracking people based on vaccination status, and employmentbased vaccine mandates, as well as religious exemptions to vaccine mandates.
Cruz also led his colleagues on amicus briefs against vaccine mandates to protect military and federal employees who refused to get the vaccine and reinstate servicemen and women who had been fired over the mandate.