Following a unanimous 12-0 vote, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced the Royalty Transparency Act of 2024, which increases transparency on royalty payments to government officials. Currently under federal law, federal employees are not required to disclose the source or amount of royalty payments received in connection with their official duties. Also, financial disclosures of members of federal advisory committees are unavailable to the public, even though those committees make recommendations that affect the lives of Americans. The legislation would require that all royalties received by federal government employees be reported on their financial disclosures forms, and that those disclosures must be made publicly available for online viewing. An investigation by government watchdog agency Open the Books found that U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its scientists received an estimated $400 million in third-party paid royalties between March 2010 and 2022. Researchers also discovered that unspecified entities doled out roughly $32 billion per year in research grants across the medical community. Open the Books also found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and doctors who worked for the NIH received hundreds of millions of dollars from pharmaceutical companies, while the NIH refuses to disclose who is paying and at what amounts. One of the recipients was Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the U.S. response to the pandemic, and who faced sharp criticism from Paul during a congressional hearing aimed at uncovering how much money Fauci had received. “During the pandemic, the American people started to think that Big Government was very close to Big Pharma. We now know that hundreds of millions of dollars flowed from the industry and enriched 2,400 scientists and key directors at the National Institutes of Health over the past decade – including those involved in vaccine development,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of Open the Books, said in a joint statement about Paul’s legislation. “But we still don’t know all the details because NIH continues to stonewall and force us into expensive federal litigation. Dr. Paul’s legislation is vital to open the books on the culture of secrecy so the American people can finally follow the money,” he added. In 2021, Open the Books filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, seeking information on royalty payments to NIH employees. The NIH released heavily redacted documents showing which employees had received royalties, but not disclosing the amounts. Last year, the NIH released new documents showing some additional information, but still with redactions on the amounts individual scientists are earning. “Taxpayers should have the right to know how much government employees are making, especially when the compensation presents potential conflicts of interest,” Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment and Committee to Unleash Prosperity, said in the statement. “Secret royalty payments violate this principle of transparency and conceal potential corruption. Congress should pass Senator Rand Paul’s Royalty Act to solve this problem.”U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is receiving praise after landmark legislation he sponsored moved out of committee.
