CDC Push for More Pandemic Power Meets Republican Resistance (1)

The CDC chief’s quest for new powers she’s said it sorely needs for a pandemic response faces resistance from a key House lawmaker.

“The CDC does not need more authority,” House Energy and Commerce Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) told Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during a hearing Wednesday. “It needs robust oversight.”

McMorris Rodgers said lawmakers want to exert greater oversight over the public health agency. “It has always operated without a congressional authorization and that is going to change.”

Health agency heads testified for the first time in nearly two years ...