Someone recently asked me when Congress would hold hearings to ensure the accountability of government officials who faltered during the pandemic. After all, there is lots to be learned from mistakes made at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, Federal Reserve, and in the Trump and Biden administrations.
For instance, who will be held accountable for government-orchestrated lockdown policies that were in retrospect poorly designed, ineffective and incredibly costly? Who at the CDC will be held accountable for that agency’s failure to detect the virus sooner? Which CDC officials will speak to the utter confusion the agency created by constantly changing messaging and political guidance?
As for the FDA’s failures, there are too many to list. But I’m not hearing anyone in power talk about, for example, holding its officials accountable for the continuing failure to approve COVID-19 testing.
Don’t forget about the explosion of government spending that extended long past 2020 with no plan for post-crisis fiscal consolidation, or the Federal Reserve’s failure to foresee the largest inflation in decades.
Unfortunately, in all likelihood, no one will be held accountable.
You think I’m exaggerating? Let me remind you that no one was publicly fired when the president’s Department of Defense led the disastrous exit from Afghanistan, nor when we learned that one of its drones killed a dozen innocent people by mistake. Nor did heads roll during the Bush administration when it was revealed that a gaggle of CIA consultants with no credentials made millions selling ineffective and illegal torture techniques. These agents were enabled by bureaucrats across multiple agencies, many of whom still have their jobs. And no one is getting fired for the ongoing fiasco at America’s southern border, where thousands of immigrant families seeking better lives suffer inhumanely.