Swine Flu (an epidemic which first emerged in North America) originated from China, because allegedly "people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that." In addition charges of racism, a Washington Post article has noted that "none of the diseases he mentioned are linked to dogs and snakes" and that rattlesnake-eating is popular not in China, but in Cornyn's own Texas. Upon the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Cornyn tweeted that the U.S. still has 30,000 troops in Taiwan (formally, the Republic of China); in fact, the U.S. has kept no troops in Taiwan since it normalized relations with the People's Republic of China. Cornyn has since deleted the inaccurate tweet and refused to respond to queries about it. Economy Cornyn voted to permanently repeal the estate tax and raise the estate tax exemption to $5 million. He voted in favor of $350 billion in tax cuts over 11 years and supported making the George W. Bush tax cuts permanent. He opposed extending the 2011 payroll tax holiday. He voted for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 but against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009. In 2008, Cornyn voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), also known as the Wall Street bailout, and later voted to end the program. Environment Cornyn voted against a measure recognizing that climate change is manmade. He was one of 22 senators to sign a letter to Trump urging him to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. In May 2019, Cornyn said it was important that the United States take measures to combat climate change, but condemned the Green New Deal as proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In April 2020, he incorrectly stated that climate scientists' models of the effects of climate change do not use the "scientific method". In 2005, Cornyn voted against including oil and gas smokestacks in mercury regulations. He voted against factoring global warming into federal project planning, and against banning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He also voted against removing oil and gas exploration subsidies. During his tenure in the Senate, Cornyn has scored 0% on the League of Conservation Voters' environmental scorecard, a system of ranking politicians according to their voting record on environmental legislation. Health care Cornyn opposes the Affordable Care Act. He voted against it in 2009, and played a leading role in the attempts to repeal the Affordable