By Ross Muscato
March 24, 2023 Updated: March 28, 2023
Rep. Greg Murphy
(R-N.C.) in a March 2, 2023 interview with NTD's "Capitol Report"
program. (NTD/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.), in his questioning of and conversation
with Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Denis McDonough during the
March 23 House Committee on Veterans Affairs hearing, pressed the secretary on
an issue which the congressman called an “absolute danger” to the United
States.
Murphy, who is a physician, was referring to the decision that the
VA made and the policy it adopted in 2016 to purchase drugs that include active
ingredients that come from China, which are then prescribed and given to
veterans.
“I don’t understand this policy,” said Murphy. “And we’re now …
allowing drugs to come to our veterans, as well as other drugs coming into this
country, that are not being analyzed, that are not being reviewed, are not
being inspected. And this is an absolute troubling thing to me as a
physician.”
Murphy, a member of the Veterans Affairs committee, always
has veterans’ issues front and center on his lawmaking and advocacy radar
screen.
The district he represents has among the highest percentage of its
residents who are veterans of any congressional district in the nation: one in
seven.
Then there are those in Murphy’s district who are in military
active service. Murphy’s district includes Marine Corps Base Camp
Lejeune, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, Marine Corps Air Station New
River, and Coast Guard Sector Field Office Fort Macon.
The exchange between Murphy and McDonough took place at the
hearing, which focused on assessing the Biden administration’s proposed budget
for the VA for 2024 and 2025.
The congressman learned from a conversation he had with McDonough
prior to the hearing that the secretary was unaware that the VA approved as
vendors pharmaceutical companies which use components from China in the
manufacture of their products.
Murphy brought up that he attended that morning a meeting of the
GOP Doctors Caucus at which members “talked about drugs in this country from
China; 90 percent of our APIs, active pharmaceutical ingredients, come from
China today—and our FDA is doing an absolute abysmal job in looking at these
drugs; seeing their purity, seeing their impurity.”
Security Threat
A March 1 story in The Epoch Times reported on how the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) supplies most of the drug precursors processed in Mexico into the
deadly drug fentanyl, and most of the illegal fentanyl in the United States
comes from Mexico.
Murphy said that beyond the injury and threat to the health of
veterans posed by the VA purchasing drugs made from ingredients that the CCP
provides, the policy imperils the security of the nation.
“And we now, like it or not, ballistic or not, are at war with our
greatest adversary,” said Murphy. “We saw this with the balloon. We saw
this with the absolute flood of fentanyl coming into this country from China.”
Murphy continued, imploring McDonough to research and look into
the matter of VA and its program that buys drugs sourced from China.
“I would like a commitment from you, and I know I can stand by this—that
this issue will be researched because it is absolutely—I’m ineffable about
this; I can’t understand why this was done.”
Murphy asked McDonough to see if there was any way that the VA
could “get out” of the drug contract it entered into in 2016, and “I think for
the sake of our veterans, we need to explore that.”
McDonough replied, “Yeah, you got my commitment, Mr. Murphy.”
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