‘It’s Made Of All Harvard Graduates—Shocking’: Lankford Rips Into Research Grant Decision Makers

Forbes Breaking News

During a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) spoke about research grant funding for Harvard University.

Transcript

00:00colleague senator langford is next thank you uh in a moment of earth-shattering bipartisanship i

00:05want to be able to second what senator whitehouse was saying because we experienced the same thing

00:09in oklahoma uh with a disproportionate uh payment uh system for surgeons physicians whatever it may

00:16be uh in oklahoma based on other states around us on this and uh that might have made sense 40 years

00:22ago it doesn't make sense today on it so that'll be one of the things i look forward to that

00:26conversation to be able to figure out on that one mr stewart let me let me continue on with you

00:30you're you're going to have questions all of you will have questions that will come up um from some

00:35of my friends that are here on the dais saying are you going to follow the law uh when president trump

00:41asks you to do something so mr stewart in particular since you're the counsel on this i want to ask you

00:46some questions based on what president biden did when he ignored the law repetitively and it had a

00:53direct effect on my state and on the people in my state uh let me give you some examples um title

00:5910 funding is out there does uh aids testing in rural areas breast cancer screenings uh in rural areas

01:06all over the country president biden's uh hhs team invented a new standard to say if each state does not

01:15promote not provide but does not promote abortion in their state they won't get title 10 funds

01:22he followed up with it in my state and cut off funding for aids testing for breast cancer

01:29screenings for all kinds of screenings in my state of oklahoma because my state wouldn't bend to his

01:35will and promote abortion in the state they literally wanted us to be able to put a 1-800 number

01:41on all the health materials that went out from our health department saying here's the number you can

01:45call to go get an abortion when we said no they said no aids testing funding for you there's nothing in

01:50the law that says that they just created that out of thin air that had a direct effect on the health

01:56care in my state uh the conscience protection issue is very clear in law uh that if a nurse or a

02:04physician says to their hospital hey i don't want to be a part of an abortion i don't want to be a part

02:10of sex change operations that violates my conscience the federal government is to be able to step in and

02:15make sure that conscience protection is actually protected the biden administration literally told

02:20everyone through hhs at the very beginning we're no longer going to protect people in conscience

02:26protections and then actually create a rule they sent out to hospitals to say if you're a physician

02:32and you don't perform sex change operations we're going to come down to you literally violating the law

02:38on its face uh orr tried to be able to find new ways to be able to shuttle people to abortion saying

02:45we didn't pay for the abortion we just drove them there provided staffing provided the details i can

02:51go on and on and on with the biden administration the way they ignored the law so my simple question

02:55to you is are you going to work to make sure that this administration follows the law that the biden

03:01administration ignored so senator i appreciate that question a great deal it will be a theme i believe in

03:08terms of will you follow the law i have a career that proves i'll follow the law i believe in the four

03:12corners of the law as passed by policymakers and that the role that i will have is to interpret the

03:19law and give good advice to secretary kennedy and and members at hhs when it comes to interpreting

03:27and applying the law and i believe my job is not to look outside of that and create new law i believe

03:35policymakers do a great job of that themselves yeah well the the simple thing here is we're a

03:41nation of laws we want everyone to be able to follow the laws and uh we're grateful to be able

03:45to have that fixed when previous presidents ignored the law to be able to say hey let's just get back to

03:49following the law on this mr trillard i want to ask you a little bit you're going to have a lot of the

03:53budget issues and have a lot of big decisions to be able to make on grant making and how that process

03:58is going to go i have noticed that a lot of the decisions for grants if you go back and look at

04:05the grants and the grant decision makers they're made by the same people year after year after year

04:11and i'm always shocked that when harvard seems to get a grant every year for the same thing and you

04:18look at the grant decision makers it's made of all harvard graduates shocking that that would happen

04:24when there are lots of other universities and lots of other entities doing great health care research

04:28all over the country that don't get a shot to be able to do it so my simple question you don't need

04:34to answer it completely today because i want to be able to poke on this and say grant decision makers

04:40need to change they need to have fresh eyes that be able to look at it and if the same people are

04:45making decisions over and over and over again on that it'd be helpful to be able to get some new voices

04:50when you're doing scientific research getting stuck in a rut doesn't help in that so i just want to be

04:55able to raise that to you as an issue is that fair fair and thank you for raising the issue the the

05:00other issue that i want to be able to raise you is just the decision about some of the health care

05:04grants as they're done just in general there's been a lot of frustration about how some of the dollars

05:09go out and how some of the awards are done so nih in 2022 did a 350 000 award to develop a smart toilet

05:18using ai not 100 sure what the ai toilet is supposed to do there's the federal taxpayers paid

05:25for a study through hhs about wearing helmets if they prevent injuries in west africa now i would

05:33tell you for free wearing a helmet in west west africa has the same health effects that it does

05:37wearing a helmet in the united states it's probably a good idea but we paid for that there was a huge

05:43study that was done to study the effect of climate change in a specific area of north africa and its

05:49health effects on things i think most americans want to say what are we investing our dollars in

05:54we want good nih research we want good research on cancer so many different rare diseases that are out

06:00there that are dependent on us doing the basic research my encouragement is when you're doing the

06:05grant studies and evaluating who gets it let's make sure we're putting the priorities into the places

06:11that needs to be put fair fair thank you for the question all right thank you

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended