Washington should have learned an important lesson after COVID-19: Stop sending our tax dollars to China for risky, secretive research.

Yet, the feds keep funneling untold millions to China and other adversarial countries, hiding the details about the suspicious projects being funded, and admitting they cannot offer a full accounting of the cash.  

For example, according to a recent report from the Department of Defense Inspector General, the Pentagon secretly paid up to $6.5 million to a Chinese biotech company for perilous research on deadly diseases.

That’s despite concerns the pharmaceutical firm may be assisting with the genocide of ethnic minorities in China, and that its work could pose a threat to our own national security.

And all we know about the project is that it involves lethal pathogens, including Ebola and COVID-19.

This particular firm, WuXi App Tec, has an even broader relationship with Washington.

According to data gathered by OpenTheBooks.com, it has collected another $1 million from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health — and because of the government’s inconsistent reporting requirements, we can’t know for sure whether even more cash is flowing to the firm from other federal agencies. 

How many companies like WuXi are there, which agencies are paying them, and at what costs and risks to Americans?

At DoD alone, the inspector general’s report admits, at least two more Chinese companies have been paid millions of American taxpayer dollars for pathogenic research.

The Government Accountability Office found Chinese institutions directly received at least $29 million between 2015 and 2021 from DoD, NIH and a handful of other agencies, as well as additional federal funding funneled through intermediaries.

However, “the full extent is unknown” because — unbelievably — the expenditures aren’t being tracked.

WuXi‘s association with China’s People’s Liberation Army and its connection to the Chinese Communist Party has spurred a bipartisan push in Congress to have the company banned from doing business with the US government and prohibited from receiving taxpayer funds.

But incredibly, as one branch of government works on a ban, another is doing business as usual.

Like the GAO, the Pentagon can’t account for how much taxpayer money it is shipping to China. 

These latest mad science experiments were exposed after congressional Republicans’ research revealed that DoD and other government agencies paid at least $490 million to entities in China between 2017 and 2022.

We hoped a more thorough examination by the IG would determine the full extent of the Pentagon’s spending in China and why.

Unfortunately, the findings raised more questions than answers, beginning with this: What else is being hidden? 

Key components of the IG report were redacted from the public, including entire pages, and the Pentagon suggested that some information remain classified to keep it secret from all but a few.

US Navy officials refused to even respond to the IG’s specific questions. 

With the US government more than $770 billion in debt to China, why are we borrowing money from them just to give it back — especially to pay for more of the CCP’s dangerous experiments on deadly pathogens?

It’s obvious Washington hasn’t learned any lessons from COVID-19. 

We are still trying to uncover the truth about the risky research on coronaviruses supported with our tax dollars in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, where a lab leak likely caused the pandemic.

Yet investigation after investigation concludes it’s impossible to follow the money trail from the US Treasury to China. 

“Due to limitations in the DoD’s systems . . .  the full extent of DoD funds provided to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential is unknown,” the IG stated.

Americans should demand to know why no one in Washington can account for how much we’re paying China, or what we’re paying for. 

It’s time to stop the secret spending. 

That’s why Republicans have proposed the TRACKS Act, which would require every penny taken from taxpayers and given to China or any other adversarial nation be accounted for and posted for public scrutiny.

Washington must be transparent about public spending — and taxpayers should have the right to review who receives their hard-earned money. 

If the Biden administration can hire an army of IRS agents to audit honest, hardworking Americans to pay Washington’s bills, the same attention should be given to tracking how those tax dollars are being spent, whether in DC or in China.

Joni Ernst represents Iowa in the US Senate. Adam Andrzejewski is the CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com, the largest private database of public spending.