Stop risky research, Congress dodges hard decisions and other commentary

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 ProgramKamala 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.

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