WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined the German Marshall Fund’s Senior Advisor to the President and Director of the Asia Program Julie Smith this week on a new podcast, Post-Pandemic Order, to discuss the Trump administration's plans to cut funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), the implications of this outbreak on the health of democracy around the world, and how and why COVID-19 should fundamentally alter U.S. foreign policy thinking.

Murphy recently announced bipartisan legislation to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to global health security, and reorient the United States’ global pandemic response amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He also recently announced legislation aimed to increase the independence of inspectors general following the firing of the Inspector General tasked with oversight of COVID-19 economic relief funds. Murphy also authored an op-ed in Foreign Policy about why the United States was virtually impotent from stopping COVID-19 from reaching our shores and what can be done better if and when the next pandemic strikes.

On the need to invest federal dollars in global health security programs, Murphy said: "We have never, in my opinion, been properly resourced. Right now, we spend about $730 billion a year on the Department of Defense  – that's on tanks and planes and aircraft carriers. We spend less than 1% of that on global public health. We're spending on average every year about $12 billion on global public health ... No one in our country today would suggest that we should be spending a hundred times as much money on military defense as we are on pandemic defense given what we're living through right now."

On the president's decision to cut funding to the WHO, Murphy said: "My feeling is that this is a moment to double down on our support for the WHO and use additional U.S. support as a lever to get them to make some reforms—and to get them to respond more quickly to these epidemics as they emerge. That's the play here. By pulling out all we do is effectively make our complaint a reality. The president says, well, the WHO is too close to China. Well guess what happens when you pull out all your funding? China steps in and fills that void. I think we should be in the business of helping the WHO reform, not basically hand them over to other countries that will gladly accept the leadership role that we leave to others."

On the importance taking a multilateral approach to defeating the virus, Murphy said: "An effective global response here involves being able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We are a smart enough and generous enough country to understand that well we are protecting ourselves, it also makes sense to help other countries to be defeat the virus ... Because if we beat the virus in the United States but it sticks around in Sweden or in Italy, then we really haven't beaten it because it'll just be right back on our shores. ... Your ongoing response to an existing outbreak has to be global. Because if you don't stop it everywhere, you're not really stopping it anywhere.”

Click here to listen to the episode in full.

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