CDC Director Mandy Cohen unscathed in her first congressional testimony

WASHINGTON — House Republicans sought Thursday to hammer the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s coronavirus record but struggled to pin the relatively new director down on agency missteps.

Several of the GOP lawmakers who questioned Mandy Cohen, CDC director since July, are pushing for the agency to narrow its scope and authorities in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. They hope to gut a data program and slash HIV funds in the 2024 budget, but they also asked questions about the breadth of the agency’s portfolio outside of communicable diseases.

Committee Chair Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-Wash.) has introduced a bill that would bar the agency from making any mandatory public policy. It would also require them to include public comment periods on certain regulatory guidance. CDC opposes the legislation.

Like many committee Republicans, Rodgers pointed to the CDC’s broad early masking guidance as an example of overreach. Though the CDC guidelines were never mandatory policies, many state and local governments implemented mask mandates including North Carolina, where Cohen served as state health secretary for the first several years of the pandemic.

“I’m very proud of the work that we did in North Carolina,” Cohen told the committee. “You have to put yourself back in 2020 when we had very little information,” and few treatment options. “I’m looking forward to turning this new chapter with CDC,” she added.

Cohen repeatedly resisted calls to say that initial masking and social distancing guidelines were wrong. Still, the vast majority of lawmakers’ CDC criticisms predated Cohen’s time as its director.

“If the CDC wants its credibility back, you got to have mea culpa moments,” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas). “You’re in the perfect position; you have nothing to do with their decisions at the time, so there’s no reason to defend it.”

Cohen underscored scientists’ evolving understanding of transmission and the sparse treatment landscape early in the pandemic. That left few Republican lawmakers satisfied, as several still questioned the breadth of the agency’s portfolio, especially in emergency response.

“CDC is an agency of all trades but master of none,” said Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.).

“It seems that there’s been a shift in the CDC for addressing broader societal issues like climate change, social determinants of health, and I’m very concerned about that,” said Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.)

Cohen, meanwhile, made a plea for lawmakers to preserve funding for data programs that help the agency forecast and monitor pathogen risks. The House GOP-led budget bill — which provides no funding for the program — was yanked off the floor before Thanksgiving as caucus support fell apart.

That proposed budget “zeroed out investments in data infrastructure [which] is just not going to be compatible with a successful CDC,” she said.

Separately Tuesday, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic announced that former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci would sit for a transcribed interview in early January and testify at a hearing later in 2024.