Idea for COVID-19 commission gets rare bipartisan backing
WASHINGTON — A broad and bipartisan group of senators is coalescing around legislation to create a high-level independent commission, modeled after the one that examined the Sept. 11 attacks, with broad powers to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and the response across the Trump and Biden administrations.
Under a plan proposed by the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Health Committee — Sens. Patty Murray of Washington and Richard Burr of North Carolina — a 12-member panel would have subpoena power to “get a full accounting of what went wrong during this pandemic,” Murray said in an interview, and make recommendations for the future.
The legislation, being circulated as a draft, is still in its early stages; Murray said she hopes to get feedback from colleagues within a month, followed by a hearing and a markup. In this highly polarized environment, both she and Burr acknowledged that politics could derail it.
And even if the measure passes both houses of Congress and is signed into law, the panel itself could become bogged down in bitter partisanship, depending on who is appointed to it.
But in interviews this week, more than a dozen senators from both parties embraced the idea, and none raised any substantive objections. More than half a dozen senators have similar proposals of their own that have produced some strange partnerships.
“I’m all for it,” declared Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., a medical doctor who is working with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and others on a similar bill. “As a doctor, if a patient dies and we don’t know why, we do an autopsy. In the military, when we have a major event we go back and figure out what we did right and what we did wrong.”
The favorable reception from members of both parties is rare, and marks a significant turnabout. Bills introduced last year, including one by Sens. Susan Collins, RMaine, and Bob Menendez, D-N.J., have stalled, in part because Republicans feared they would target President Donald Trump’s early failures. But now President Joe Biden has been in office long enough to have had failures of his own. And by stating that the origin of the pandemic must be investigated, the Murray-Burr bill appeals both to Republicans, some of whom theorize the virus emerged from a lab leak in China, and Democrats who want that theory put to rest.
“This is a crisis that has been shockingly polarizing,” said Philip D. Zelikow, the lawyer who led the 9/11 Commission and has been laying the groundwork for a pandemic inquiry. “This is the first signal that maybe leading Democrats and Republicans are now ready to come together. I think that’s really heartening. A lot of people would not have predicted it.”
The Murray-Burr bill is carefully drafted to avoid partisan divisions. The panel would be made up of 12 “highly qualified citizens” — preferably, but not necessarily, nonpartisan subject matter experts in relevant fields like public health, manufacturing of medical products, supply chain issues and national security. They may not be government employees.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress would each appoint half the members, who would name their own chairman and vice chairman. The White House would not make any appointments. The panel would hold hearings and take testimony, as the Sept. 11 panel did, and would be expected to produce a report within a year, with a possible six-month extension.
The Biden White House has been noncommittal. Jeffrey Zients, Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, said this week that the administration was focused on the current crisis, but “over time we do look forward to engaging with Congress and reviewing lessons learned.”