Congress avoids making tough choices and shies away from risky research, analysis suggests

Science desk: Stop Risky Research!

The Risky Research Review Act, now before the Senate, “could finally require independent oversight” around risks like gain-of-function research, note Bryce Nickels & Jay Bhattacharya at RealClearPolitics. “The bill would create an independent advisory panel” charged with “reviewing all federally funded research with the potential to increase the transmissibility or virulence of any potential pandemic pathogen.” “The stakes could not be higher,” as such research “likely caused the COVID pandemic, which led to 7 million deaths — 1 million of them in the United States.” It also “offers a rare opportunity for compromise and bipartisanship.” Good: Time to eliminate “the subjective discretion that previous policies provided to funding agency officials like Anthony Fauci.” “The life of every human being on the planet is at stake.”

Libertarian: Congress Dodges Hard Decisions

“A continuing resolution (C.R.) is the best that Congress can muster,” groans Reason’s Jack Nicastro, when it comes to funding the federal government. “It’s pretty much guaranteed that Congress won’t pass a single appropriations bill by October 1,” the official deadline to pass all of them, which it hasn’t managed since 1997. This year lawmakers haven’t even passed legislation funding “the salaries of congressional offices and funds the security and maintenance of the Capitol, never mind the rest of the federal government.” In budget-making, “there are no solutions; only trade-offs” and “the recurring failure to pass a budget shows that no one in Congress — and few in Washington, D.C. — seem to have any desire to make hard decisions.”

Conservative: Harris’ Socialist Program

Kamala Harris’ “major policy proposals are almost identical to those promoted by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA),” smirks Merrill Matthews at The Hill. For example, the “socialists want to add seats to the U.S. Supreme Court (court packing) and impose term limits on the justices,” which “Harris and most Democrats are pushing” through “SCOTUS reforms.” The DSA also “wants to ‘defund the police’ and ‘free all incarcerated people,’ ” while Harris in the past “supported the ‘defund’ movement and eliminating bail for some crimes.” And “under the topic of ‘Health Justice’ the DSA supports Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) Medicare for All bill,” which Harris co-sponsored. The “only major difference” here is “DSA members aren’t trying to hide their socialist beliefs; Harris is.”

Eye on Pa.: Bob Casey’s Anti-Biz Bull

Senate candidate Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) “earned a Bronze Star in Iraq” and “held senior positions at the Treasury Department and National Security Council before going on to become CEO of one of the world’s premier hedge funds,” but Sen. Bob Casey (D) is trying to use “his experience as a businessman against him,” fumes The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn. Casey ads lean on “a larger caricature of business as the bogeyman responsible for all our ills,” e.g. blaming inflation “not on government overspending but on predatory businesses.” “Nowhere does Mr. Casey even hint that it is American business and not the government that provides the jobs a healthy society needs and the goods and services people want.”

Media watch: Journos Embrace Ignorance

“A new type of journalist” today “wants less, rather than more, information about” a major presidential candidate, marvels the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. Notably, MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle recently asserted on the Bill Maher show that “Kamala Harris is not running for perfect,” and “we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is, and the kind of threat he is to democracy.” That, says York, means that expecting “the leading candidate for president of the United States” to submit “to scrutiny about her policy positions is an unreachable state of perfection.” Worse, other big-name journos soon agreed with Ruhle. No wonder Harris dodges: “She has a group of journalists on her side who actively do not want her to answer more questions.” “When it comes to where Harris stands, they don’t want to know.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board