(Bloomberg) -- Republicans want a new congressional panel created to monitor coronavirus dollars to also investigate “the actions and inactions” of the World Health Organization, China and the U.S. House of Representatives itself in the early stages of the outbreak.

The demands are included in a list of rules the GOP wants the Democratic-led committee to adopt as safeguards against “partisan political ends,” in a letter delivered just hours before the panel is holds its first hearing Wednesday on how to safely reopen the U.S. economy.

The letter was sent from the panel’s top Republican, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who is also the second-highest ranking Republican in the House, to the panel’s chairman, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the House’s No. 3 Democrat.

House Republicans last week created a China Task Force to investigate the origins of the coronavirus and how the WHO handled reports of the initial outbreak. Representative Michael McCaul, who is leading the task force, said in an interview that it will not be a “partisan exercise” but a look at Chinese influence through a “Covid-19 lens.”

Scalise wrote that for more than three years, “Democrats in the House of Representatives have been singularly obsessed with attacking President Donald Trump, searching for ways to undermine his Administration for political gain.”

Now, Scalise said, “rather than pulling together to steer our country through the novel coronavirus epidemic, the harassment of the President continues.”

“We write to ensure Speaker Pelosi’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis will be operated in a fair manner that focuses on the health and safety of the American people and restoration of our economy, instead of pursuing the selfish political prospects of the Democrat Party,” Scalise wrote.

Included in the Republican demands are that it examine “the actions and inactions” of the World Health Organization and the People’s Republic of China on the coronavirus epidemic, and what the House itself could have done since December 2018 to prepare for a possible epidemic. Trump has criticized all three entities and claimed that the Democratic-led impeachment trial distracted Congress from the emerging threat.

Scalise’s letter lays out routine demands for rules before a hearing. But the added demands for the examinations of WHO and China, as well as the Democratic-led House itself, go beyond such basic parliamentary requests to setting the stage for fights over the very purposes of the committee, and its mission.

Republicans have complained that as many as eight other panels or commissions already are set up to oversee distribution and use of federal funds used to fight coronavirus, and the creation of this panel is not just duplicative, but designed to carry out partisan attacks, they say.

Pelosi and other Democrats have denied that, but have also accused Republicans of having used special committees for political attacks.

Scalise wrote in the letter that the demands being made are to “ensure the legitimacy and effectiveness” of the subcommittee’s work.

The letter does not specify what will happen if the Democrats do not accept his requests.

There was no immediate response from Democratic spokesmen for the new committee.

Testifying at the hearing Wednesday will be former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, and Mark McClellan, a former FDA commissioner and former administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, authors of a report released in late March by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, “National Coronavirus Response: A Road Map to Reopening.”

Gottlieb served as head of the FDA under Trump until April 2019.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.