More than $1.3 billion of US taxpayer money has been sent to Russia and China over the past five years, according to a new report released Wednesday by Sen. Joni Ernst and a government transparency watchdog.
The production from Ernst (R-Iowa) and OpenTheBooks identified $870 million paid by federal agencies in funding and grants to entities in Russia between 2017 and 2022, with another $490 million paid to Chinese organizations.
More than $56 million went to China through direct contracts and grants, while more than $434 million were distributed through subcontracts and subgrants.
At least $816 million went to Russian entities through direct contracts, $35 million in through direct grants and around $21 million through subcontracts and subgrants.
“It is gravely concerning that no one in Washington can actually account for millions sent to institutions in China for pointless projects, but I have the receipts,” Ernst told The Post. “Already, we have seen EcoHealth hide the use of taxpayer dollars to fund research at the Wuhan Lab that may have unleashed the COVID-19 pandemic on the world.”
The US funneled $2 million to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology for research that included experiments on bat coronaviruses in the lead-up to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Ernst’s analysis.
A January inspector general’s report from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found that the agency’s National Institutes of Health “did not effectively monitor” about $8 million in grants it gave to EcoHealth Alliance between 2014 and 2021 — $1.8 million of which went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and seven other recipients.
Other agencies, including the FBI and Energy Department have claimed the most likely explanation for the pandemic’s origins is that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab.
Some of the largest sources of funding Ernst identified came from the State and Defense departments, which spent $58.7 million and $51 million, respectively, on Russian and Chinese contracts and grants.
The Pentagon, in one instance, gave $6 million for technical support of US military software that helps with equipment and supply delivery, despite past warnings from the Office of the Inspector General to avoid subcontracting Chinese IT companies for such work.
More than $1 million was also given to Chinese companies through funds from the 2020 CARES Act in March 2020 as part of COVID relief for the National School Lunch Program.
HHS contributed $4.2 million to Russian lab work and research projects, one of which involved putting cats on treadmills, the report states.
In another case, $4.7 million was given to a US-sanctioned Russian company in 2022 for health insurance, while $2.4 million more went to Russian alcohol and addiction research.
Nearly $1.5 million went toward tracking the coronavirus pandemic in Russia, and other subsidies funded a program in the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos.
“When our money lands in adversarial nations, it cannot be by accident, through corruption, or without proper oversight from the granting agencies,” OpenTheBooks CEO Adam Andrzejewski. “We must be equipped to explain why and whether it helps or harms us.”
Ernst and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) introduced on Wednesday the Tracking Receipts to Adversarial Countries for the Knowledge of Spending (TRACKS) Act to hold the US accountable and publicly disclose all funding and grant decisions.
“Thanks to Senator Ernst’s work, we know the federal government has wasted more than one billion in US taxpayer dollars on our adversaries. This is crazy, but to make matters worse, this may only be the tip of the iceberg,” Gallagher said in a statement.
“The TRACKS Act brings badly needed transparency to how we spend federal dollars and will help us take steps to hold the government accountable and prevent taxpayers from supporting our adversaries.”
Ernst relied on data provided by the Congressional Research Service for the total, but said the true amount of US funding to China and Russia is likely higher.
A Government Accountability Office report last month commissioned by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) found US agencies provided at least $48 million to China from 2017 to 2021, about half of which were grants and half of which were contracts.