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16Senate Resolution 75: Expressing the Sense of the Senate That Member Countries of NATO Must Commit at Least 2 Percent of Their National Gross Domestic Product to National Defense Spending to Hold...
Twenty-six bills and two resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 532-557, and S. Res. 75-76.
Pages S929-30
Measures Reported
S. Res. 76, authorizing expenditures by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Page S929
Measures Passed
Local Access to Courts Act: Committee on the Judiciary was discharged from further consideration of S. 32, to clarify where court may be held for certain district courts in Texas and California, and the bill was then passed. Kennedy, Jr.
Page S932
Nomination: Agreement
Senate resumed consideration of the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., of California, to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Pages S877-S923
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 53 yeas to 47 nays (Vote No. EX. 51), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S877
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that notwithstanding Rule XXII, the post-cloture time with respect to the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. expire at 10:30 a.m., on Thursday, February 13, 2025; that following disposition of the nomination, the motion to invoke cloture with respect to the nomination of Brooke Rollins, of Texas, to be Secretary of Agriculture, be withdrawn, and Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination, with no intervening action or debate; that following disposition of the nomination of Brooke Rollins, Senate resume consideration of the nomination of Howard Lutnick, of New York, to be Secretary of Commerce, and Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination at 1:45 p.m.; and if cloture is invoked on the nomination of Howard Lutnick, all time be considered expired, and Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Kelly Loeffler, of Georgia, to be Administrator of the Small Business Administration, and if cloture is invoked on the nomination, all post-cloture time be expired; and that Senate vote on confirmation of the nominations of Howard Lutnick and Kelly Loeffler at a time to be determined by the Majority Leader, in consultation with the Democratic Leader, no earlier than Tuesday, February 18, 2025.
Page S923
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing for further consideration of the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., of California, to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, post-cloture, at approximately 9:30 a.m., on Thursday, February 13, 2025.
Page S932
Nomination Confirmed
Senate confirmed the following nomination: By 52 yeas to 48 nays (Vote No. EX. 50), Tulsi Gabbard, of Hawaii, to be Director of National Intelligence.
Pages S871-77, S956
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S931-32
Record Votes
Two record votes were taken today. (Total--51)
Page S877
Adjournment
Senate convened at 10 a.m. and adjourned at 1:06 a.m., on Thursday, February 13, 2025, until 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, February 13, 2025. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Acting Majority Leader in today's Record on pages S932-33.)
Every speech and line is the Congressional Record's own text, read from GovInfo. Speakers are matched to members by GPO's own metadata. Referandom places each turn on the Clerk's video by matching its words: 63 of 137 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Mr. President, for the third time, I come to the Senate floor to ask my Democrat colleagues if they will respect the Democrats on the Senate Agriculture Committee. That committee voted unanimously to approve Mrs. Rollins to be Secretary of Agriculture. There should be no reason to spend 30 hours of debate, and it would show disrespect for the Democrats on the Agriculture Committee not to approve her unless we did it by unanimous consent.
Mr. President, President Trump's border czar was at the Capitol yesterday to update Republican Senators on the progress the administration is making on arresting and deporting criminals here illegally. And it is difficult to believe some of the individuals they have arrested were still in the country--members of violent international gangs; individuals arrested for murder, for rape, for kidnapping, for drug trafficking, for sexual crimes involving children, and for human smuggling. Again, it is staggering to think that these criminals were out there on our Nation's streets. And our communities will be safer places without these individuals.
Since day one of his administration, President Trump has been fulfilling his campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration and secure our border. And it is good to see.
Immigration is a key part of our country's story, and immigrants have made untold contributions to our country. But we need to ensure that immigration is done legally, for both the safety of our country and to preserve respect for the rule of law. The chaos of the last 4 years was unsustainable, and it was dangerous.
We had 10 million individuals flood across our southern border. We had millions--millions--of undocumented individuals take up residence in our country, more than the population of a number of U.S. States. Law enforcement officials were overwhelmed, and officers were pulled off of essential work of guarding the border just to process the flood of migrants.
Border cities and other cities across the United States struggled to deal with the influx. And all of this chaos was an invitation to terrorists, to smugglers, to drug cartels, and other dangerous individuals to enter our country.
So I am tremendously proud and grateful for the incredible amount of work the President has done so far to make it clear that illegal migration will no longer be tolerated. There is a lot more work to do, and some of that is going to require Congress's help.
Mr. Homan, President Trump's border czar, made clear to Senators yesterday that Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are going to need additional resources to continue the good work they have been doing to secure our border and to get criminals off of our streets. We intend to deliver.
Today, Senator Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, is kicking off the committee markup of a budget resolution that will lay the foundation for a transformational investment in border security and immigration enforcement and in our national defense. We will provide resources to increase the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents, expand detention space, facilitate deportations of dangerous individuals, and obtain the barriers and technology that we need to secure the border.
Mr. President, for too long, our country has tolerated rampant illegal immigration. That ends now. I am grateful for everything the President is doing to protect our streets and uphold the law. And the Republican-led Congress will ensure that the administration has the resources needed to continue this important work.
Mr. President, let me begin with a quote from President Trump during his campaign for the Presidency.
He said:
Well, today is day 23, and prices are up 3 percent. Let me reiterate that Donald Trump said during his campaign that prices would come down starting on day 1. It is day 23, and prices are up 3 percent.
Donald Trump is already breaking his promise to the American people. Inflation is the No. 1 concern of most Americans, and Donald Trump said he would fight inflation, but he hasn't. Groceries are up 0.5 percent. Chicken, pork, steak are all more expensive. Egg prices are up 15 percent from last month. Gas prices are up 2 percent from last month. The prices of used cars are up. The price of heating your home is up. Housing costs are through the roof even though Republicans are racing to privatize Fannie and Freddie.
Well, welcome to the age of Trumpflation. Donald Trump is breaking his promise to lower costs. This was the No. 1 issue in the campaign to most people. Donald Trump said: Starting on day one, prices are going to start coming down. Well, they are up 3 percent, and it is day 20. Welcome, again, to the age of Trumpflation.
Donald Trump knows that he doesn't have real solutions to bring costs down despite his campaign promises. So what is he doing?
He is distracting and diverting the American people or trying to-- with issues that have nothing to do with bringing prices down. He is distracting and diverting with issues like changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico; talking about changing the chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center; talking about building hotels in Gaza; talking about the Panama Canal; talking about annexing Canada.
These are not the things Americans signed up for. No way. If there is one mandate Donald Trump had, it was to fight inflation on day one like he promised to do, but he is not doing that. He is focused on everything else except what Americans want most.
Meanwhile, Americans woke up this morning to bad news for their bank accounts. They woke up to the grim reality that Donald Trump is not going to keep his promise to lower costs. They woke up--Americans woke up--to an era of Trumpflation, and, unfortunately, this is only the beginning.
Mr. President, I just heard the minority leader, the senior Senator from New York, Senator Schumer, on this floor talking about today's Consumer Price Index data. Stunningly, he points to President Trump as the reason for it.
Let me just correct the record. The price data that Senator Schumer is complaining about is from the final days of the Joe Biden administration. Those are the numbers that are out today from the final days of the Biden administration.
Certainly everyone in Wyoming and everyone in your home State of Oklahoma knows that under the Biden administration, the Democrats, prices of goods and groceries, gasoline--the things that we need in our everyday life--prices rose more than 20 percent under Joe Biden.
High prices are Joe Biden's parting gift and his lasting legacy. They are the party of open borders and high prices. That is why they lost the election.
So here we have the Senate minority leader--now in the minority. He used to be in the majority. The reason he is in the minority is because of the high prices brought on the people of this country as a result of that administration. The numbers out today are reflective of the final days of that administration.
Painfully high prices--they came from Democrats' reckless overspending. And their policies--we are from energy States--were anti- American-energy policies. Those are the things that Senate Democrats voted for repeatedly and stood behind and supported.
Republicans are focused on making life more affordable for families all across this country, hard-working families. We have a plan to unleash American energy, and that way, we can keep lowering prices for American families.
I can just never forget when Joe Biden said he wanted to prioritize climate over energy that was available, affordable, and reliable. It was a disaster for the country and resulted in the defeat of the Democrats.
Today, Mr. President, I come to the floor also to talk about confirmation votes. The Senate will soon vote on the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to be the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
America needs to be healthy. I am a doctor. I have worked with patients for over 20 years, was a surgeon in Wyoming. The problem is, our Nation faces a chronic disease epidemic--chronic disease, including diabetes, cancer, obesity, heart disease, and high blood pressure. Chronic diseases are so widespread that managing them accounts for almost 90 percent of the Federal healthcare spending in this country. We spend a lot of our gross national product on healthcare.
Nearly three in five American adults and one in four American children are impacted by this. Our healthcare system tries to address the problem. Yet, by incentivizing procedures over prevention and paying for that, well, it often fails to address what we need to do effectively as well as economically. As a result, Americans are actually becoming less healthy.
We need to put America on the path to good health. President Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to do just that, to make America healthy again. Mr. Kennedy will bring a fresh set of ideas and eyes to important debates surrounding our Nation's public health. He is going to be a voice for the vast number of Americans who were failed by the previous administration. The previous administration silenced reasoned debate.
I believe Mr. Kennedy is going to deliver accountability and transparency. For Americans, that means more choices and better information. It means healthy foods and healthy competition for patients. It means lower costs and higher quality. It means increased access to care. Access is so critical in my home State of Wyoming, with so many rural and frontier communities, people going long distances for healthcare. It also means honest, unbiased, and trustworthy scientific research that is both innovative as well as accountable to the American people. People want the truth. They want to know what the facts are. They want to make decisions for themselves.
This is Mr. Kennedy's bold vision to revitalize America's bill of health. He is very clear about his mission, has been throughout. The mission, as he told the Finance Committee, is ``to end the chronic disease epidemic and make America healthy again.''
Apparently, that is not enough for the Senate Democrats. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada was actually dismissive of him at the Senate Finance Committee. I heard her say to Mr. Kennedy:
This one issue--chronic disease epidemic that is plaguing our Nation--is the key issue to our healthcare. Respectfully, addressing chronic disease is what we ought to be talking about for healthcare for the people of our country.
Mr. Kennedy had to testify and did testify before two separate Senate committees as part of his confirmation. Most people being confirmed come to the Senate and only testify at one committee. He responded to rigorous questions from both Republicans and Democrats, and he answered those questions with candor and with clarity.
He told the Senate HELP Committee that his leadership approach was collaborative. He pledged to ``empower the scientists to do their jobs,'' not to impose, as he said, ``preordained opinions on anybody at HHS.''
He was also clear that he supports vaccines. He told the Finance Committee:
The Senate has every reason to take him at his word.
Mr. Kennedy is a bold choice. He is pro-health, pro-vaccine, and pro- transparency. He is the right choice to make America healthy again. I look forward to voting to confirm him.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for 6 minutes, followed by Senator Wyden for 5 minutes, Senator Crapo for 5 minutes, and Senator Schumer for 2 minutes, prior to the scheduled vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I rise once more to oppose the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be the Director of National Intelligence.
As I have said repeatedly, I have great respect for Ms. Gabbard's over 20 years of service to our Nation both in and out of uniform. I am, however, profoundly worried that she lacks the qualifications or judgment to be DNI.
The job of the Director of National Intelligence is not a duty to be taken lightly. The incumbent serves as the principal intelligence adviser to the President and also bears the weight of responsibility to prevent another 9/11.
The DNI must also represent the tens of thousands of intelligence professionals around the world who often toil in anonymity. They serve as America's first line of defense against terrorists,
Unfortunately, through her own words and actions, Ms. Gabbard has demonstrated she is not up to the task.
She took the word of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad against the assessments of our own Department of Defense, State Department, and intelligence community when she denied that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people.
She knowingly met with a Syrian cleric who had vocally threatened to conduct suicide bomb attacks against the United States.
She sought to blame the United States and NATO--the United States and NATO--for Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine.
She publicly praised and defended Edward Snowden when he compromised our Nation's most sensitive collection sources and methods and then ran off to hide in China and Russia. Those compromises put at risk not only our intelligence but our men and women in uniform in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Just last week, even with repeated inquiries from our Republican colleagues, she refused to call Snowden a traitor.
Speaking of China, when asked about TikTok at her confirmation hearing, she refused to acknowledge the threat posed by China owning a social media company that reaches 170 million Americans.
All the way up until she was nominated to be DNI, she publicly advocated for the wholesale elimination of FISA 702, a tool we use actively in the intelligence domain, a tool that contributes literally 60 percent of the information that makes up the President's Daily Brief. That Daily Brief would also fall under her responsibility should she be confirmed.
The environment facing a new DNI today is complicated and fraught with challenges. Not only have the traditional threats persisted from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, but we have seen increased threats from terrorism, cyber actors, and transnational criminal organizations.
All the while, the intelligence community itself is under attack. Some of our own senior and experienced law enforcement and intelligence professionals are being asked to take political litmus tests, and those who are seen as insufficiently loyal are being fired or forced to resign. Whole Agencies are being eliminated and funding impounded, in flagrant defiance of the Constitution, which only gives the Congress-- us here in this body--the power of the purse.
Unvetted, unqualified individuals illegally burrow into classified and sensitive information. This very action is jeopardizing our national security and violating Americans' privacy. These DOGE bros seem to have no restriction on them at all, and I have seen no evidence that Ms. Gabbard is prepared to deal with this onslaught.
Therefore, I must oppose her nomination and urge my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. President, in a moment, the Senate will proceed to a cloture vote on the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to be Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I rise to encourage my colleagues to support this motion.
As Secretary of HHS, Mr. Kennedy would oversee our Nation's expansive healthcare system, from sources of coverage to advancement of public health. Mr. Kennedy's decades of experience and deep drive to advocate on behalf of consumers will set a patient-centered tone at the Department.
As he has demonstrated in both public and private settings, Mr. Kennedy is committed to reorienting our healthcare approach and restoring faith in our institutions. His passion for addressing America's chronic disease epidemic will save lives, reduce costs, and establish a foundation for a healthier, stronger country. His dedication to transparency will empower patients to make more informed decisions about their healthcare and form a responsive rapport with Congress. As Mr. Kennedy stated during his hearing, ``if Congress asked me for information, you will get it immediately.''
Over the course of his vetting process, Mr. Kennedy met with dozens of Members on both sides of the aisle, spoke with bipartisan Senate Finance Committee staff, appeared before two committee hearings, and answered over 900 questions for the record, not to mention presenting thousands of pages of documents.
Mr. Kennedy has gone through the same Office of Government Ethics process as all nominees who come before the Finance Committee and has received support for his efforts. Similar to all other nominees, we have a letter from the Director of the Office of Government Ethics stating:
He even amended his ethics agreement, going beyond what was required by the Office of Government Ethics, in response to the request from one of our Finance Committee members.
I urge my colleagues to join me in advancing this nomination so we can begin to make our country healthier.
Mr. President, I know I spoke a little while ago on Tulsi Gabbard, but I feel so strongly, I just wanted to make one last plea to my Republican colleagues.
In a moment, the Senate will vote to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as the next Director of National Intelligence. Every single Democrat, I am really proud to say, will oppose this awful nomination because we simply cannot, in good conscience, trust our most classified secrets to someone who echoes Russian propaganda and falls for conspiracy theories.
It is hard to believe, of all the talented and capable people, that this is the person nominated. It is a person who has said things like: The Ukraine invasion was caused by the United States, not by Putin. It is somebody who has denied Assad's use of chemical weapons, despite all of the intelligence. It is someone who echoes Russian propaganda and falls for crazy conspiracy theories.
I say to my Republican colleagues, please think once again about this nomination. This endangers our security. And my guess is, if a secret ballot were cast on Tulsi Gabbard, maybe she would get 10 votes. You all know how bad she is.
And so I know that people feel they want to please the President in his nomination, but there are certain times you have to buck and stand up and say: No, this is just a very bad choice for America. And the nomination of Ms. Gabbard is simply one of those.
I plead with my colleagues--I know it is the last minute--to think twice, to vote no, as we all will vote, because this is such an awful nomination, who will endanger our national security and our intelligence operations throughout the country and the world.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to be the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
And let me put it very bluntly to my colleagues: A vote for Robert Kennedy for this position is a vote for a sicker America. And there is irony in that judgment, considering Mr. Kennedy is the figurehead of a mass movement known as Make America Healthy Again. But on issue after issue, Mr. Kennedy refused to stand up for policies that will keep Americans healthy and out of the hospital.
From vaccines to affordable health insurance, to lower drug prices, to women's reproductive healthcare, Mr. Kennedy--through several hearings--ducked and dodged and weaved instead of answering the basic questions that came from Senators of both parties. When he did answer, he demonstrated a shocking lack of knowledge about the
The only conclusion I am left with is that he stands steadfastly by the outlandish views he has expressed over his two-decade career as an anti-vaccine crusader, and he is fully prepared to implement the Republican healthcare agenda.
That agenda boils down to putting Big Pharma and insurance companies back in charge, while leaving millions of American families to fend for themselves without affordable care.
And I want to be clear about this. Going back to my days as director of the Gray Panthers, which is what I did before I went into public service, I can just tell you, this is the least qualified nominee to ever be nominated for a position of this importance. So for the next day and night, Senate Democrats are going to be on the floor telling the American people why.
Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle still have an opportunity to turn away from this dangerous path. If they do not, my view is their legacy will be tarnished by setbacks in science that will echo in America for decades.
As I mentioned, I spent countless hours as a young man working with seniors to navigate the newly created Medicare Program and help them avoid predatory insurance company tactics that remain all too common today. To me and many other Americans, healthcare, colleagues, is the most important issue, because if you and your loved ones don't have their health, everything else goes by the boards.
The reality is we need to make sure that Americans have the best and most affordable healthcare possible, rather than having a handful of healthcare companies gobble up the entire market for health insurance, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, and even doctors.
The results have been great for shareholder profits and disastrous for American families. Costs keep climbing. The act of getting a doctor's appointment or filing an insurance claim seems to have become an Olympic sport in much of America. The system delays and denies care and rakes in profits, while patients are left wondering how they are going to get the care they need.
So the question before the Senate now is whether we want America's chief health officer to be somebody who is going to take on those corporate interests, somebody who is going to fight tooth and nail to lower costs and improve care, somebody who is going to work to protect and improve the Federal healthcare programs that tens of millions of Americans rely on and not gut them.
Everything I have seen and heard from Mr. Kennedy over these last few weeks has led me, colleagues, to conclude he is not the person that America needs. Americans have little reason to take Mr. Kennedy at his word. They do, however, have every reason to believe Mr. Kennedy will continue to embrace and amplify anti-vaccine programs, every reason to believe that he will back up Donald Trump's abortion bans. Every reason to believe that he will be a rubberstamp for the Republican health agenda that would rip away the healthcare of so many Americans.
Over the course of the rest of the day and through the night, Democrats are going to show the American people why these concerns are so serious.
I yield the floor, and I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced---yeas 52, nays 48, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived.
The question is, is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., of California, to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 53, nays 47, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 53, the nays are 47.
Mr. President, as we begin this discussion that is so important to America, I thought I would just mention the conversation I had recently with a couple of young medical students who came up to me and said: We know you are interested in healthcare and have been involved in this.
I am so appreciative of Senator Murray, who is going to pick up on the healthcare issue--an area where she has very substantial experience and expertise.
I thought these medical students summed up this debate, because they said: The way we see this Kennedy nomination, it is not just a vote for next week or even next year; this is a vote with enormous impact for decades.
Because Mr. Kennedy, according to these young medical students, has a long record of essentially being anti-science.
What we are going to do in our discussion of his nomination is go into that and other issues.
Suffice it to say, during his confirmation hearings--and they have been in multiple committees now--he was given ample opportunity from members on both sides of the dais to clarify his views on science and vaccines and our Nation's biggest Federal health programs. We are going to, in the hours ahead, touch on each of these and why Mr. Kennedy's failure to demonstrate a basic understanding of these important issues that impact America's health make him a uniquely unqualified nominee to become our Nation's chief healthcare officer.
In beginning my remarks, I wanted to say that ever since my days with the Gray Panthers, I have always felt that healthcare is the most important issue. If you and your loved ones don't have your health, everything just goes by the board. So that just reinforces what these young medical students were saying about the decision we are going to make in future hours with respect to Mr. Kennedy.
I am going to start with perhaps the most dangerous aspect of his long history, and that is his embrace and amplification of vaccine conspiracy theories. He has made a lucrative career out of sowing doubt in the minds of parents when it comes to vaccinating their kids. His nonprofit, the Children's Health Defense, is solely dedicated to peddling these conspiracies. You can even get merch. There are baby onesies, apparently, that read ``Unvaxxed, Unafraid,'' ``No Vax, No Problem.''
He has been the attorney of record on at least five cases against drug companies for their vaccines, which he didn't disclose to ethics officials and refused to answer questions about. He also refused to give up his 10 percent stake in any settlement agreements--instead, passing them off to his son. He refused to recuse himself from taking any actions that might affect his family's financial interests.
A vaccine that became routine for young people about 20 years ago is involved here, and since then, it has successfully cut cervical cancer rates into just a fraction of what they were before the drug came out to market. All of this adds up to a future HHS Secretary who stands to profit off of undermining this vaccine and, as a result, raise cervical cancer rates.
To quote my Republican colleague Senator Cassidy, a physician, Mr. Kennedy is ``financially vested in finding fault with vaccines.''
He also played a big role in one of the most deadly measles outbreaks in recent history. In 2019, he traveled to Samoa and used his platform to promote his anti-vax agenda, taking aim at the measles vaccine. The vaccine rate in Samoa plummeted. By 2019, measles had torn through the population, making more than 5,700 people sick, and 80 people were killed, most of them young kids.
During his confirmation hearing at the Senate Finance Committee, Mr. Kennedy told me, ``We don't know what was killing them,'' speaking about those 83 deaths. But just last week, the Director General of Health for Samoa called this claim by Mr. Kennedy ``a total fabrication.''
So, Mr. President and colleagues, just put that in your thinking about this consideration--Mr. Kennedy saying that he didn't know what was killing these young people in Samoa and the Director General of Health of Samoa calling Mr. Kennedy's claim ``a total fabrication.''
A recent analysis showed that Mr. Kennedy has made 114 separate appearances in the last 4 years where he took anti-vaccine views or spread misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines. In 36 of these instances, Mr. Kennedy directly linked vaccines to autism.
Instead of providing the committee with clarity or reassurances about his decades-long career peddling vaccine conspiracies, what did Mr. Kennedy do? He dodged, he weaved, he bobbed and gave no indication that as Health and Human Services Secretary, he would stand by settled science that surrounds vaccines.
As HHS Secretary, Mr. Kennedy would have a huge amount of control over how vaccines are promoted and administered in our country. He could issue orders that discourage doctors from sharing information with parents and patients about lifesaving vaccines. He could issue an order that discourages schools from talking about or even requiring vaccines. He could rubberstamp an Executive order from Donald Trump that defunds the Centers for Disease Control, which is essentially the Agency in charge of getting Americans up-to-date information about vaccines and when to get them.
Just imagine you are a parent scrolling on Instagram or listening to a podcast. You hear this gentleman speaking passionately about the danger of vaccines. Maybe you do a bit of research, and lo and behold, you find this is the Secretary of Health and Human Services, America's chief healthcare guy. You think to yourself: Huh, this guy must know what he is talking about. Maybe he is right in his questioning of whether vaccines are safe and effective.
So the seed of doubt on vaccines gets planted. Then, at your kid's next wellness exam, you decide not to get them their next round of vaccinations. A few months later, you are taking them on a trip to Disneyland, say for spring break, where countless other parents like you have heard the same medical advice from the same person and they, too, decided against vaccinating their kids.
It only takes one of those kids carrying a deadly disease like measles for an outbreak to begin, and pretty soon, after what was supposed to be the spring break trip of your dreams, your kid, sadly, is showing symptoms.
What follows then is a slew of doctor's appointments, maybe even a stay in the hospital, sleepless nights, missed days of work and school, not to mention dread and fear for your child's very well-being. Meanwhile, countless other parents around the country that went on the same trip to Disneyland are now experiencing the same exact nightmare you are.
Sowing the seed of doubt in the minds of just a few people can have massive consequences for communities across the country, and it is not hypothetical. Right now, there is a measles outbreak in Texas that has sickened more than a dozen kids. The number of kindergartners showing up with an exemption for required vaccinations jumped to a record high last fall. The two facts are connected, and Mr. Kennedy and his allies can take the credit for it.
Now, Mr. Kennedy is fond of saying he is not making recommendations about whether parents should vaccinate their kids; he is just asking questions and giving people choices. That is a slippery tactic used by conspiracy theorists to dodge any real responsibility for their words and actions, and it is absurd coming from somebody who is about to be confirmed for a job that is entirely about making recommendations.
Mr. Kennedy is also fond of saying that if somebody shows him the science to prove he is wrong, well, then he will apologize and retract his statements, but when somebody does show him the science proves him wrong, he just brushes it aside and basically will not accept it as fact.
Once again, to quote my Republican colleague Bill Cassidy directly: ``to
Even Republicans like Senator Cassidy--someone I work with frequently on the Finance Committee and respect his opinion--he notes how dangerous this guy is.
It is not hyperbole to say that when Mr. Kennedy becomes Health and Human Services Secretary, if he does, and has control over how our government rolls out vaccines or makes them available, I believe kids in America will die.
When disease rates for illnesses that have effective vaccines start to rise in States across the country and hospitalizations and death tolls mount, my Republican colleagues are going to regret voting, if they do, for Mr. Kennedy today or early tomorrow.
When disease rates for illnesses that have effective vaccines start to rise in States across the country and death tolls mount, again, we will see Republicans say: This is something that could have been prevented. What else should we have done?
Republicans will be responsible for every child that dies as a result of not being vaccinated because it seems they care more about staying in the good graces of Donald Trump than they do about protecting the lives of kids. Again, this is something they will regret for years to come.
Now, before we turn to Senator Murray's remarks, I would just like to touch on Mr. Kennedy's stance on reproductive choice--an area where Senator Murray has been our leader for years and years in the Senate.
In the lead up to and during his failed Presidential campaign, Mr. Kennedy repeatedly claimed he supported a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions. Less than a year ago, in an Instagram post on June 14 last year, he stated that he supports the emerging consensus in this country that abortion should be legal up to a certain number of weeks.
Fast-forward to his confirmation again at the Senate Finance Committee a few weeks ago. He was pressed repeatedly by Democrats about his stance on abortion. Instead of clarifying, Mr. Kennedy defaulted to a clearly rehearsed talking point that he repeated over and over again:
While that answer doesn't give us much clarity, it is certainly telling. Mr. Kennedy has a long history of changing his stance on healthcare issue after healthcare issue to whatever position benefits him at the moment. As long as it earns him power or it earns him a paycheck, as far as I can tell, Mr. Kennedy will believe--or at least pretend to believe--whatever you want him to. He is willing to give up his principles and all his beliefs that women and mothers are better equipped to make their own healthcare decisions than politicians, and it is all about, as we have talked about on this floor, staying in Donald Trump's orbit of power.
While Mr. Kennedy recites rehearsed talking points on the subject, this is an issue that has had real, deadly consequences for women, as Senator Murray has said again and again.
Donald Trump spent his first term packing the Supreme Court with rightwing extremists willing to rip away the reproductive freedoms guaranteed to us under Roe v. Wade. In the wake of the Supreme Court's gutting Roe, millions of women living in red States have had their reproductive freedoms ripped away from them, all due to Donald Trump.
In the years since the overturn of Roe, there have been countless headlines about the consequences of these abortion bans: women bleeding out in parking lots or in emergency rooms because they were denied care; women becoming infertile and losing their ability to have kids in the future because they couldn't get care; and, in the very worst cases, women dying.
So it should horrify every American that we don't actually know where Mr. Kennedy stands. The man who could become our Nation's chief healthcare officer--we don't know where he stands on reproductive health, short of perhaps just saying he is a ``yes'' man for anything Donald Trump tells him to do.
So I think at this point, Mr. President, I want to yield the floor to my friend and colleague from Washington State because she knows so much about the challenge of ensuring that women's reproductive health services are being protected. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mr. Kennedy could do so much damage to the well-being and health of women.
I am very pleased to be able to yield the floor to Senator Murray to discuss that and other pressing issues.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mr. President, thank you to my colleague from Oregon, who has very clearly stated why this nominee is not someone who should be holding the title of Secretary of Health and Human Services, and I appreciate all of his work on this, and his wife's work. I hope everyone heeds them.
The American people are watching now with alarm because the vast majority of people know vaccines are safe, they are effective, and they are lifesaving. But we are now on the verge of confirming as our Nation's highest health official a man who has spent considerable time, money, and effort undermining that basic fact; a man who has abused his platform by refusing to acknowledge the well-established science that shows that vaccines are not linked to autism.
Fear about that point--fueled by RFK, Jr., and others peddling misinformation--is a leading reason that parents do not get their kids vaccinated against preventable, dangerous diseases. That is why elevating a man like RFK, Jr., to lead HHS would be so dangerous. Just giving him any platform to spread vaccine doubt is dangerous. But to give him one of the biggest megaphones in the world?
It is truly shameful that we even are debating this. My colleagues should know better. They actually do know better. They are looking the other way. They are choosing to pretend like it is in any way believable that RFK, Jr., won't use his new power to do exactly the thing he has been trying to do for decades: undermine vaccines.
Never mind the fact that CDC has already modified web pages with information about vaccines and other vital public health information, which a Federal judge has now ordered the Trump administration to restore. Never mind that the Trump administration is also reportedly planning widespread and significant layoffs--layoffs--at CDC and across HHS. This is how RFK, Jr., substitutes his own beliefs for science.
So when the vaccine conspiracies start swirling, and RFK, Jr., turns HHS into ground zero for misinformation, ``I had no idea'' is not going to be an excuse for confirming him, because at the HELP Committee hearing, the chair pressed him repeatedly about the debunked claims that vaccines cause autism. And when RFK, Jr., said he needed to ``see the evidence,'' he was shown the evidence, but to no one's surprise, he did not keep his word, admit he had been wrong, and spread the good news that vaccines do not cause autism.
He has had 2 weeks since that hearing to look at the same settled science as everyone else--crickets. But he won't hesitate to quote the latest anti-vax conspiracy. He is totally up to speed on that front.
Are my colleagues really buying that this guy will take an impartial look at the science?
If you think RFK, Jr., will change who he is, you are lying to yourself. He has given no evidence to suggest that and all the evidence in the world to the contrary.
Given his long and growing track record, we cannot just pretend, if RFK, Jr., finally gets power to undermine vaccines--a cause he has dedicated a considerable amount of time and effort to--that he will just give up. That is not believable.
And I know I have been talking a lot about vaccines because it is so obviously alarming, but the responsibility he would have goes far beyond that.
So let's break some of this down, both the ways he could undermine vaccines as HHS Secretary and the other responsibilities that would be at stake.
To start with, the CDC is under HHS. That means that the Secretary directly appoints people to CDC's vaccine advisory board. That board is responsible for making recommendations about
So simply put, changing those recommendations will change what vaccines millions of Americans--including kids--will be able to get from their healthcare provider. If he is confirmed, there would be nothing stopping RFK, Jr., from firing the entire board and replacing them all with vaccine skeptics. After all, he has said many times and in many ways that he thinks CDC is corrupt and bought by Pharma--as usual, by the way, without any evidence.
RFK, Jr., would also oversee the Food and Drug Administration--that is another Agency he has repeatedly tried to discredit and attack-- where he says he plans to fire--fire--hundreds of scientists on day one, at an Agency that plays the crucial role of making sure our drugs and our treatments, including vaccines, are safe and effective when we purchase them.
Not only would Mr. Kennedy have a key perch from which he would undermine vaccines, on a scale like never seen before, he could also use that platform to peddle quack treatments with no basis in science.
RFK, Jr., would also have jurisdiction over NIH. That alone means influence over billions of dollars in medical research--research that is responsible for a significant portion of our economy and, more importantly, research that patients are desperately hoping will help them find cures. But RFK, Jr., could redirect those funds to promote his favorite pet conspiracies instead of promising cures, or he could make good on his plans to fire hundreds of researchers and pause infectious disease research for 8 years.
It should go without saying that viruses aren't going to take a break.
And here is the thing: The attacks on medical research are now already happening under Trump. From his day one Executive orders, President Trump has already been threatening medical research. Suddenly, all of our grants are at risk because they are looking at addressing barriers to care or understanding why Black and Native American women have higher maternal death rates.
And now President Trump is also trying to illegally, arbitrarily, and suddenly change NIH guidelines to set an unrealistic low cap on indirect cost rates. That will mean researchers laid off, studies canceled--including lifesaving clinical trials--and kids not able to get the treatment they need, all because President Trump and Elon Musk don't seem to understand how we actually fund important research and couldn't even be bothered to find out before taking an ax to our medical research labs.
At a time when lifesaving research like this is already under attack by the President and the richest man in the world, no one who truly values medical research should vote to install one of the biggest attackers of medical science as the Secretary of HHS.
Insurance is another huge portfolio for HHS. Last time Trump was in office, we saw millions of people lose their healthcare coverage. The uninsured rate went up after years of hard-won progress. And we all know he still wants to rip up the Affordable Care Act, which will drive up costs and kick people off their coverage.
There is no reason to think Mr. Kennedy will stand up to that effort. Indeed, there is no reason to think he has the experience and understanding of the system to actually do so.
During his committee hearings, RFK, Jr., confused Medicare and Medicaid. This is basic stuff. He failed to describe the components of Medicare.
And, yes, Mr. President, I do absolutely have to talk about abortion care. This is of grave importance right now.
In his hearings, not only did RFK, Jr., confess to having no real understanding of EMTALA--that is a law which requires patients have access to lifesaving, emergency care, including, in some cases, abortion care--he also showed that he will be totally open to Republicans' fact-free efforts to rip away access to medication abortion.
Like so many other issues that RFK, Jr., is simply wrong about, the science on that has been settled for many years now. Mr. Kennedy made clear, though, he is very open to revisiting access to the abortion pill, based on a Republican argument against the science that basically boils down to ``nuh uh''--``nuh uh.''
Putting up barriers to accessing the abortion pill or ripping it off the market completely, as Republicans have made very clear they want to do, would be absolutely devastating.
And let's not forget about pandemic threats. The lies that RFK, Jr., spread during the last pandemic already made clear he is not the man to do this job. But if that weren't enough, when there was a pandemic threat response planning session for this new administration, he skipped it. He didn't go. It would be almost comical if this wasn't so serious.
Everywhere you look, everything about this nominee is so concerning. We cannot take this man at his word--something he has changed and gone back and forth on time and time again. But we can take him on his record, which is that he has consistently undermined vaccine confidence, and, by the way--note--he profited from that. And we can take the threat of what he might do seriously, especially given the alarming things that are already happening.
If RFK, Jr., gives you his word of honor that he won't freeze research, guess what. We are already seeing the Trump administration totally upend medical research. Thanks to the Trump funding freeze, NIH hasn't issued any grant awards in weeks.
If RFK, Jr., swears he is not going to take down information about vaccines, he is not going to silence experts, well, don't look now, but the Trump administration has already taken down or changed CDC pages about vaccines. They have already silenced public health experts.
If RFK, Jr., pinky-promises you that he won't undermine medical science or studies and he won't ignore global health threats, well, you might want to sit down for this, but President Trump has completely demolished our global health aid work. He has already completely demolished it.
The fallout is utterly heart-wrenching. Already we know of a woman who died because the USAID-supported hospital she went to for oxygen was forced to discharge her because they got a ``stop work'' order from the Trump administration.
It is not clear if she was the first death caused by Trump's complete freeze, but there is no question she will not be the last.
Let me make a really important point here: It is not just people across the world who will be affected by this. There was a study being done on a new HIV treatment with thousands of volunteers--a study being done, already having thousands of volunteers doing the treatment--but now, without their regular injections, which are cut off by Trump's move, there is going to be too little of the drug in their system to protect those people from HIV, but enough of the drug that, if they contract HIV, it could mutate to become drug resistant.
So for all of the absolutely unhinged conspiracies we have heard about medical research from RFK, Jr., and the like, where is the concern of this actual risk in this actual study happening right now, all because President Trump cut off foreign assistance?
RFK, Jr., has been silent about that risk, silent about how wrong that is. And so even as he is making these empty promises on one hand to some of our colleagues, he is already standing by as President Trump breaks them on the other hand.
Oh, and here is one more: If RFK, Jr., says he is going to consult you on healthcare personnel, please do not be fooled.
Look, I don't know why my colleagues need me to tell them this. I like to think we have some pretty smart people around here. But this vote--RFK, Jr.'s own nomination--this is your consultation on healthcare personnel, not some made-up promise for later. This is the point when you have the most power.
Whatever he might say, you don't get to choose who RFK, Jr., will appoint to this or that. Heck, he doesn't get to choose who President Trump appoints. The decision you get to make--that all of us on this floor get to make--is the decision before us right now.
You get to choose whom you vote to confirm, and you will have to live with
I cannot tell my colleagues enough: This is not a game. This is not a political role without consequence. The Health Secretary has real power over whether Americans can get basic information and care that impacts whether they live or die. As I have tried to drive home throughout this process: Vaccines save lives. That is not a question. It is not a slogan. It is a fact.
If, when parents look to you worried about their newborn, wanting to do what is best for their baby and trusting your advice as a public health leader, if you cannot tell them the same truth that centuries of science and experience tells us, which is that vaccines are safe and effective and lifesaving, then you have absolutely no business leading the Department of Health and Human Services--none.
And so just as I did at the hearing, I want to warn all of my colleagues. By merely voting to confirm Mr. Kennedy, we would be telling our constituents: He is worth listening to on vaccines. That alone will get people killed before he even lifts a finger, because he does not even need the levers of power to get people killed, all he needs is that megaphone to affirm his views by voting to confirm him as our highest health official.
Let's not mince words about what that will mean. When babies die from whooping cough because parents weren't sure if the vaccine was safe, will you be able to look them in the eye? when the flu sweeps our nursing homes? when measles sweep through our communities? Will it be worth it?
I will end on this: I am sure there are plenty of Members who know perfectly well just how dangerous it would be to confirm RFK, Jr. They don't need to hear it from me. In fact, some of them even know the danger better than I do.
Here is what I do know: Conscience is a muscle. Courage is a muscle. The less you use them, the more they fade away. So if my colleagues are feeling the pressure from President Trump or if they are feeling the weight of the richest man in the world on their backs on this vote, I would warn them: This will certainly not be the last test we face here in the Senate. Giving in to this pressure now won't make it go away. It won't soften the pressure you face later, and it will not strengthen your resolve when the stakes are higher. It will just show pressure works.
If you do not draw a line somewhere, you will cross every line you could ever imagine. You will be pushed further and further into accepting things you thought you never would, things you thought you never could.
I think most of my colleagues know what is really at stake here. I think most of my colleagues know what sort of man RFK, Jr., is and what sort of damage he could do if he is confirmed.
There are political realities. We all get that. But there is also right and wrong. There is fact and fiction. There is people staying healthy, and people dying pointlessly, kids dying pointlessly from diseases that we can prevent because they thought Congress took its job of vetting our healthcare Secretary seriously.
So I urge my colleagues to show some courage. I urge them to show some conscience. I urge them to vote no on RFK, Jr.'s, nomination.
Mr. President, I yield 3 minutes of postcloture debate time to the Democratic leader, and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
Mr. President, I find it so interesting how people are watching so closely to see what this administration does, and I have been so pleased to see that the polling shows, by an overwhelming amount, 70 percent of the American people agree with how President Donald Trump is carrying out his job, getting things done for the American people, things that they voted to see done, and he is keeping those promises.
Now, when we look at the issue of illegal immigration, we see that in his first weeks back in office, what he has done at the top of his to- do list has been to take action to secure this border. The numbers that we are seeing, how they have dropped with the number of encounters, with the number of ``got-aways,'' this is encouraging. The message is out there. The United States is going to protect and defend its sovereignty. We are going to protect and defend our people. That is important, and we are seeing it.
Now, the President has taken some Executive actions that have yielded results. By Executive order, he restored the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy. He restarted the border wall construction--which, by the way, this is something the Border Patrol has told us not for just a few years, but for decades: We need a border wall. That is where the phrase ``build the wall'' came from; it came from people that are down there every day protecting this country from harm.
The President has also ended catch-and-release. Now, that is that practice where somebody comes across, and then they get their paper that they are claiming asylum, and they are told that they can go on into the country and go wherever. And there are nonprofits down there on the border, and they give them a plane ticket and food and a phone and off they go to their desired destination at taxpayer expense. So that has ended.
The President has also sent troops to the southern border and, thank goodness, we are seeing these deportations of criminal illegal aliens taking place.
Yesterday in Nashville, we had eight that were apprehended in a human trafficking ring--eight. Two of them are linked to Tren de Aragua. They were Tren de Aragua gang members.
Now, these are all things that the President is doing to make this country safe, and we have security moms all across this country--and certainly across Tennessee--who are reaching out to us and saying: Keep it going. Deport those who are criminally in this country. Let's carry this out. We are seeing such good results.
In operations across the country, ICE, which is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has arrested 11,000 criminal illegal aliens, including many violent offenders and gang members. Since inauguration day, migrant encounters at the southern border have reportedly dropped 87 percent. As I said, we are seeing results.
We know that for years, former President Biden allowed more than 10 million illegal aliens to enter the country, including tens of thousands of convicted criminals and more than 1.7 million known ``got- aways.'' And for 4 years, Tennesseans and Americans across the country have suffered the tragic consequences, including rampant migrant crime.
Recently, our Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference released a report documenting the widespread migrant crime in our State during the final months of the Biden administration. Now, the report confirms what we already know, that during the Biden years, every town was a border town; every State was a border State.
So our Tennessee District Attorneys General took the last 3 months of 2024 and they said: Let's look at what is happening in these last 3 months and see how this has escalated.
Now, of course, we know that under Joe Biden violent crime rose 43 percent his first year that he was in office. And what we saw from the District Attorneys' General report is that there were, in 3 months--now this is a 3-month number--there were 2,719 reports of illegal aliens being charged or convicted of 3,854 offenses in the State of Tennessee. Among them, the most common offense was driving under the influence. There were 654 arrests of those illegally in the country driving under the influence. These offenses accounted for more than 13 percent of all DUI arrests across the entire State.
And this problem is a big reason why, last year, my Republican colleagues and I introduced the Protect Our Communities From DUIs Act. This bill would automatically deport any illegal alien who is charged with driving under the influence.
As I have gone across our State, in each of our 95 counties--which I visit every year--in each of these counties, I have heard from law enforcement, from police chiefs, from sheriffs that these DUIs are such an incredible problem,
Now, over this same 3-month period, illegal aliens committed hundreds of violent, heinous crimes: 154 instances of domestic assault, 80 of aggravated assault, 21--21--convicted of child abuse, 9 of statutory rape, 8 of sexual exploitation of a minor, 7 of vehicular homicide, 4 of murder, 3 of rape of a child. And the list goes on and on.
As I said, over 2,700 illegally in the country that were convicted of more than 3,800 crimes.
Disturbingly, these numbers are likely an undercount. Only 73 of Tennessee's 95 counties reported data to the District Attorneys General Conference under Biden. National data showed illegal aliens were pouring in from countries all over the world, and the Tennessee Migrant Crime Report also reflects this. There were 92 unique countries of origin--from Mexico and Guatemala, Jamaica, Romania.
Here is the bottom line: Because of Joe Biden's open border policy that was supported by far too many of my Democratic colleagues, thousands of crimes were committed by thousands of criminal illegal aliens in the State of Tennessee over just a 3-month span. And this, my colleagues, is just one State. This is my State, but we know this is happening in communities all across this country.
More than anything, the report underscores the importance of President Trump's mass deportations which are underway. There are many ways that Congress can support these efforts. My CLEAR Act, which I have talked about many times on the floor, would ensure State and local law enforcement officials have the tools to help the Federal Government deport criminal illegal aliens. This is crucial, especially when you have got far-left leaders like the Chicago mayor refusing to turn over criminal illegal aliens to Federal custody.
Now, General Bondi is suing these sanctuary cities for allowing criminal illegal aliens who have no right to be in our great Nation to harm Americans. And thank goodness, she is being tough on crime.
I have also introduced the Preventing Violence Against Women By Illegal Aliens Act, which would allow the deportation of illegal aliens convicted of sexual offenses or domestic violence. Any illegal aliens who commit these heinous crimes should be removed from the country immediately, and I encourage all of my colleagues on each side of the aisle, support this.
And my CONTAINER Act would ensure that border States like Texas have the legal authority to place temporary barriers on Federal land to help stop the flow of traffickers, drugs, and criminals coming across the border.
There are thousands of criminal illegal aliens residing in Tennessee and across the country. We should be using every resource at our disposal to remove them from our country. In many ways, the bills that I have mentioned would help President Trump to get the job done.
Mr. President, it is not often that the stakes of a vote to confirm a Cabinet nominee are this high, but tomorrow, when we vote on the nomination of RFK, Jr., to be the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the stakes will be life and death.
Mr. Kennedy, in his words but more importantly in his actions, has proven over and over again that he is a unique danger to society, but he is on the edge of becoming the country's top health leader, with the power to unleash bygone diseases and undermine trust in science for generations to come.
For the first time ever, we will have a Health Secretary who has actively helped to cause outbreaks instead of to contain them. We will have someone in charge of medical research who has taken every opportunity to undermine science instead of promoting it. We will have someone who has never come across a crazy idea that he didn't like, whether it is that anti-depressants are the cause of mass shootings or that chemicals in the water are turning children gay. This is the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Those two things right there should be immediately disqualifying. This should be 100 to 0.
This guy used to be a Democrat. This guy was pro-choice. This guy was for clean energy. This shouldn't be a partisan issue, except to say, for HHS, you need somebody who has devoted their life and hopefully has some expertise in the area of public health.
It is not just that we didn't get someone who has expertise in public health, we have someone who has caused disease and death. I say those words with precision. I understand that both sides of the aisle are prone to exaggerating their case and being apocalyptic when we describe a pending vote. I have been here for a while, and everything is always the most important vote that we will ever cast. I don't know if this is the most important vote we will ever cast. I do think--gosh, I hope I am wrong; I really do hope I am wrong--I do think this is likely the Cabinet Secretary vote that is likely to age the most poorly because this person has the potential to actually cause diseases like rubella, like mumps, like measles, like polio that have been gone for many generations because we have a vaccine regime.
I want to tell you what he did in Samoa. In 2019, he flew to Samoa to discourage people from taking the measles vaccine. The reason was that he wanted to run a ``natural experiment'' to see how people would fare against the disease without protections.
Some of you may know this. My father was the first whistleblower against the Tuskegee experiments in which the U.S. Public Health Service did a similar thing. They knew that penicillin cured syphilis, and they knew that, for the most part, untreated syphilis caused death. But the U.S. Public Health Service decided to divide a cohort of African-American men into two parts. One would receive the medicine and be safe and be cured. Another cohort would receive a placebo and not get the lifesaving cure for syphilis. Why did they do that? To ``observe the disease process.'' To observe the disease process.
When you investigate whether or not a medicine works, there is a whole process to it--the FDA, double-blind studies, all the rest of it. The basic idea is that you try to get to some level of reliability or statistical significance so you can project out into the population what is going to work and what is not. The sick-in-the-head way to do it is to say you can't achieve statistical significance until you just let a bunch of people get sick and figure out what happens.
The U.S. Congress, led by someone with whom I served for a couple of years, Tom Harkin, when they found out about the Tuskegee experiments, they made a law against U.S. Public Health Service ever doing that again because it is immoral. It is bad science, sure, but more than that--they treated these African-American men as if they were worth experimenting on; as if this category of human beings in the United States was expendable for scientific research purposes. And that is exactly what happened in Samoa. That is exactly what happened in Samoa: 6,000 people got the measles, 83 people died, 79 of them were kids.
It is so chilling to contemplate the idea that someone as recognizable as a Kennedy would fly across an ocean to a small, developing country and basically tell everybody: Be afraid of this lifesaving medicine.
It is not like he did that once and said ``I am sorry, I misunderstood'' or ``I am being misunderstood.'' This dude actually sells onesies on his website saying--I think it is like ``Unvaxxed, Unafraid'' for a little baby. This guy has views that are out of the mainstream of, I would guess, 99 out of 100 U.S. Senators.
I do understand the pressure that some of my colleagues are facing. They are being told: If you vote against one Trump nominee, you will be primaried.
That is not a small amount of pressure. But this one, I just promise you, is not going to age well.
Some of my colleagues are expressing reservations in private. I think that is better than not expressing any reservations at all. Some of them are getting private assurances from Mr. Kennedy that he does not, in fact, hate all vaccines; he just wants to answer questions and all the rest of it. I am not reassured. I think this person has demonstrated over a pretty long career that he says whatever is convenient in the moment.
This is like an unreconstructed--he is a Kennedy. He was running for President in the Democratic primary, and now he is a Trump guy like 10 months later. What does that mean? It means he has no core values. There is just no way to go from over here to over here politically in such a short period of time except that he was offered something, and he was offered this job. Why does he want this job? Because he has a very specific view about public health.
I just want to make one other point. The problem of our food system, the problem of the extent to which we subsidize ultraprocessed foods that are coming from commodities, that are subsidized in the farm bill and causing people to get increasingly diabetic and all the related health problems that happen related to that--that is a really legitimate place to do some good, bipartisan work. I would love to do that. It is also not what the HHS Secretary does. It is what the U.S. Department of Agriculture does for the most part, and it is what the Congress does.
The problem is the farm bill. The problem is, you get what you subsidize, and we are subsidizing all the corn products and all the soy products and all the sugar products that go into the lab-tested, extra- delicious, extra-bad-for-you, extra-addictive stuff that is making us all--even though we are the wealthiest country in human history--a very unhealthy country. If that is all this guy were working on, you could count me in.
But if your idea of public health has to do with healthy food, has to do with prevention, has to do with understanding that our food system and our agriculture system and our USDA and our farm bill process is essentially broken, you don't have to purchase this kind of crazy, evil stuff. You just don't. You don't have to do it. There are lots of good people on the food system side you can work with, work for, cheer on, organize with.
But this man is going around--he is not talking about the COVID vaccine. He is not talking about whether or not it is appropriate to require masks in public, and Democrats and Republicans are still arguing about stuff like that. He is talking about stuff that, like, if you are a parent and now you don't know whether, when your kid goes to school, they have reached herd immunity for stuff that is like way, way, way, generations back in the rearview mirror.
So I don't know if this is going to mark one of the most important public health moments in American history, but I can't think of another time where we actually have the technology, we have the medicine, we have the science, we have the distribution system, we have the public infrastructure to keep people safe, and we just decide by a vote of 53 to 47 to make people unsafe.
Secretary of Defense, DNI--all these are important--Treasury--every Cabinet position is important. It is going to be a little more challenging to know whether your vote is vindicated in the sweep of history. I think this guy is going to age very poorly in the job because I think we are going to see bad public health outcomes very, very shortly. This really is a matter of life and death.
I understand what I have learned over the last 10 days is, if Republicans are going to display courage, it is not going to be on the Cabinet. There are a few that have voted not with their party, but for the most part, they are in line, and Trump is going to get his Cabinet. But let this be a marker for everybody. Let today be a marker for everybody. Even if you voted for Trump, if you didn't vote for Trump, if you are not a voter--it doesn't matter. If you think it is a good idea to leave all of these diseases in the rearview mirror, then this is a very, very bad person to have running the Department of Health and Human Services.
Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, I had the opportunity to question Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the President's nominee to serve as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
I asked Mr. Kennedy, Jr., a simple question: What different vaccine schedule would you say I should have received?
I asked this question because just 3 years ago, Kennedy said:
When I asked him this question, Mr. Kennedy referenced a study by Poland, a study he assured me--and not just me but also my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and the American people watching--that this study asserted that, indeed, certain races required a different vaccine schedule.
That was a lie. In fact, the study's own author stated the data doesn't support a change in vaccine schedule based on race.
Mr. Kennedy's response was damning, and his response was dangerous. So I followed up following the hearing with a letter and with questions. I wrote to Mr. Kennedy:
In that hearing--
[I have to ask you, Mr. Kennedy]: Do you still believe that Black and White individuals should have different vaccination schedules?
Now, you would think that the man who wants to serve as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the man who wants to be tasked with the mission of HHS, which is improving the health, safety, and well-being of America, would provide a thoughtful and nuanced response. It was anything but because, let's be clear, Mr. Kennedy is not a doctor; he is not a scientist. In fact, his only tangential connection to the world of health and science is decades-long activism in questioning the efficacy and safety of vaccines. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised at his curt and dismissive response.
Mr. Kennedy wrote:
Yet another lie.
Mr. Kennedy's life story is one riddled with quackery and laden with conspiracy theories.
I quote him; when he said:
I quote:
He also said:
I quote:
He also said:
He also said:
These are all statements made by a man who is asking to be held responsible for a singular mission. The mission of the U.S. Department of Health
Let us not speak of Mr. Kennedy in a vacuum. We have now held the floor multiple times over the past week over a string of nominees that are dangerous to the American people not because--and I cannot stress this enough--we disagree with their politics or their worldviews. We can have robust policy debate. We can have robust scientific debate. In fact, robust debate has the potential to move us forward as a country. Respectful debate is the hallmark of this body. It is a crucial component of free speech.
I went to law school, and I spent years in the courtroom trying cases and making my arguments before a jury of my peers. Grounding my arguments was a basic set of evidentiary facts. But what we are dealing with here isn't a debate; it is a popularity contest and a test of loyalty.
Mr. Kennedy is not in this position today as the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services because of his vast experience in medicine. Mr. Kennedy is not in this position today because of his deep scientific knowledge. Mr. Kennedy is not in this position today because he has respect for the scientific method. Mr. Kennedy is not in this position today because he respects medicine. Mr. Kennedy, like many of his fellow nominees, is in this position today because of his deep loyalty to the President of the United States.
What makes our job increasingly difficult as Members of the U.S. Senate is that we have the duty to advise and consent. It isn't just a privilege of this Chamber; it is a responsibility to speak for the people of our States as well as the American people as we evaluate the qualifications, the experience, and the temperament of a President's Cabinet nominees.
What is happening on the part of my Republican colleagues is not advice and consent. The sole qualification being assessed is loyalty-- not loyalty to country, not loyalty to the American people, not loyalty to the duties and responsibilities we have been entrusted with by the voters in each of our States. The sole qualification up for assessment is loyalty to the President, and Mr. Kennedy has that in spades.
But loyalty to this President comes at a cost--not a cost to the billionaires, not a cost to the people in this body but at a cost to the American people--Democratic Americans, Republican Americans, Independent Americans, Americans who voted for this President, Americans who did not, and Americans who did not vote at all.
The President has been consistent that he believes the American people delivered him a mandate to carry out his agenda. With respect to the health, safety, and well-being of America--the purview of Health and Human Services--the President believes that cutting funds for medical research into things like cures for cancer is apparently a part of that mandate.
Just this weekend, the President announced massive cuts to NIH--an Agency which I am proud to say has its home in Maryland. The mission of the National Institutes of Health is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. It falls under the very Agency Mr. Kennedy is seeking to run.
Here are what some scientists--people I implore Mr. Kennedy to listen to despite his apparent distaste for the profession--had to say about these massive cuts:
Dr. Richard Huganir, professor and chairman of the Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in my State of Maryland, said:
Dr. Otis Brawley, professor of oncology and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Policy, said:
Dr. Brawley has actually overseen grants at the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the NIH, as well as received them for his cancer research.
He went on to say:
Dr. David J. Skorton, president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, said:
Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, a Duke University--my alma mater; go Blue Devils!--professor of medicine who won the Nobel Peace Prize in chemistry in 2012, said:
NIH funding supports over 600 current and ongoing clinical trials at Johns Hopkins in Maryland. The NIH supports hundreds more critical research projects and clinical trials at the University of Maryland-- clinical trials in cancer, pediatrics and children's health, heart and vascular studies, and the aging brain; research on traumatic brain injury to members of the military, suicide prevention, addiction, and patient safety.
Clinical trials support over 23,000 jobs and $5.7 billion in economic activity in Maryland. These massive cuts will lead to over $200 million in losses to Hopkins and over $50 million in losses to the University of Maryland.
I may not be a Republican voter, but I can assure you, Republicans across our country aren't seeking to stymie progress on a cure for cancer.
By putting the NIH in his crosshairs, the President is targeting some of the most vulnerable Americans: the young child suffering from sickle cell disease; the working mom who is also struggling to care for a parent with Alzheimer's; the family member suffering from an opioid addiction; the father dying of lung cancer--all diseases being actively researched by the NIH.
Disease and suffering do not respect the boundary of partisan politics; they impact each and every American family. It falls in part to the Secretary of Health and Human Services to do everything in his power to get us closer to cures. Instead, I fear we have a nominee before us who is more interested in getting us closer to conspiracies.
With loyalty to the man in the White House as opposed to the health and well-being of the American public, Mr. Kennedy is likely to follow his boss in supporting attacks on Medicaid. This administration and my Republican colleagues are seeking to upend Federal Medicaid financing and are considering per capita caps and repealing Medicaid expansion funding.
Let me make this simple. The Republican framework to cut Medicaid puts nearly 435,000 Marylanders at risk of losing coverage. It will lead to major gaps in healthcare coverage and undermine family economic security. It will put quality care out of reach for more families.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, these are Democratic families; these are Republicans families. That shouldn't matter to the President or to the nominee for the Department of Health and Human Services. All that should matter is that these are proud American families.
The administration's attacks on Medicaid would kick millions of people off their health coverage and force States to make deep cuts to benefits, eligibility, and reimbursement rates. My State can't afford these cuts. Maryland's families can't afford these cuts, as 96 percent of eligible children in Maryland are supported by Medicaid and/or CHIP. Cuts would disproportionately hurt children with the lowest incomes and the highest healthcare needs.
At a time when Americans are struggling under the weight of inflation--scraping to pay for food, gas, and housing--we cannot strip away or cut their health coverage. That is a cruel move that will certainly bankrupt many individuals and families. Many Americans are one catastrophe away from financial ruin, and if you take away their coverage and access to affordable care, it will be realized.
Don't just take it from me; Marylanders have been calling and writing in, demanding that Congress do everything it can to fight against attacks to Medicaid.
Jacqueline from Baltimore shared this with us:
Another constituent from Ellicott City shared this:
Such an anecdote should stir all of us to action. It should stir the Members of this body to take more seriously our duty to advise and consent, to push back against a nominee who sees his role as a loyal foot soldier to one American who sits in the White House and not the millions of Americans whose health and healthcare are on the line.
Last week, I looked Mr. Kennedy in the eye, and said I would not be supporting his nomination. I said that his views are so dangerous to our State and to our country; that his voice would be a voice that parents would listen to.
I honored my constitutional duty of advice and consent.
On behalf of every single Marylander who has lost a loved one to disease, every single Marylander who works at NIH or is actively researching cures, every single Marylander who has been led astray by a snake-oil salesman peddling quackery instead of science, I will be voting no on Mr. Kennedy for them.
To my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I urge you to think long and hard about the phrase that you believe encapsulates your mandate--``America First.'' If we are not putting the people of this country first, then we are most certainly not putting this country first. ``America First'' cannot exist if the people in this country are too sick to be strong. And when you have someone like Mr. Kennedy responsible for the health of our citizenry, I fear that is where we are headed--dead last, literally and figuratively.
I may not be able to stop this nominee from being confirmed, but I want every Marylander to know that I will never stop fighting for your health and for the health of your loved ones.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. President, I come to the floor to join my colleagues with a great deal of concern to discuss the Trump administration's nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to be the next Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
To put it very simply at the outset, Robert F. Kennedy--RFK, Jr.--is unfit to lead the highest health office in our Nation.
First of all, RFK has no--let me repeat, no--health or medical experience. That, in and of itself, should be a redflag on this nominee, who is supposed to be tasked with leading our Nation's health Agency.
But, sadly, that is not where the redflags end.
From his radical and dangerous opinions on vaccines and public health to his promises to cut medical research, to his ever-changing position on women's rights to access reproductive healthcare, he has proven that he lacks the credibility, the knowledge, and the capability to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Let's take a step back. When President Trump ran his campaign, he ran a campaign on lowering costs for working Americans. Well, where has that promise gone?
We saw today that inflation has gone up in the last quarter. It is over 3 percent now. And we have seen nothing from President Trump's first weeks in office that addresses the high cost of healthcare, of food, of housing, of childcare.
Two weeks ago, this administration, including the Health and Human Services Agency, halted funding across the board for programs like our community health centers and substance use treatment programs. These centers are often the main source of healthcare for their communities. They serve the people across the States of this country.
In our office, I heard from programs like Coos County Family Health, a community health center that provides lifesaving care to rural patients across the northern part of New Hampshire, what we call the North Country. Their programs for training new doctors and providing services for victims of domestic violence were, and still are, at risk, thanks to Trump's Executive orders and funding freeze.
I heard from Navigating Recovery in Laconia. That is a substance use treatment service that depends on Federal funding for more than 50 percent of its budget. They are worried about keeping their doors open. This is an organization with providers who will literally sit with a patient by their hospital bed, following an overdose, to make sure they are getting the best guidance, the best treatment, and the follow-on services, like housing and childcare, that allows them to start their recovery.
This is a real issue for us in New Hampshire, where we have been hit very hard by the opioid epidemic.
The Trump Executive orders and funding cuts will force Navigating Recovery to lay off staff and to curtail assists, should those funding cuts continue.
These are actions on the part of the White House that don't lower costs for family. They do just the opposite. They put people out of work, and they weaken our ability to care for our most vulnerable populations.
But when he was asked if he would reverse this policy of cutting funding for programs like substance use recovery, RFK refused.
The thing is, we should be taking steps right now to lower costs for families and children. Half of the uninsured Granite Staters site costs as their reason for not being able to afford health insurance. More than two-thirds of people in New Hampshire have delayed care, and another 25 percent have delayed buying needed prescriptions or said they have to ration their meds.
We could help these people right now. We could pass the Healthcare Affordability Act, which would make permanent premium tax credits in the Affordable Care Act that have cut healthcare costs for 24 million Americans, nearly 70,000 from New Hampshire.
Passing that bill would directly help constituents like the man in Newmarket who contacted our office. He is 55 years old. He is a patient at Lamprey Health Care, which is a community health center. He had been uninsured and avoided going to a doctor his whole life. But, sadly, he was recently hospitalized for 10 days because of complications from untreated diabetes. He had sepsis, and he had an infection in his foot.
Unfortunately, he didn't have insurance when he was hospitalized. But, luckily, Lamprey Health Care sat with him and helped him purchase health insurance on healthcare.gov, helping him avoid potentially devastating medical debt.
These tax credits are vital to his and to millions of Americans' ability to afford healthcare. But, again, when asked about these tax credits, RFK refused to say that he would support extending them--so much for any concern about lowering costs for families.
Now, if this administration is not trying to lower costs, what are they doing to help the people they swore an oath to serve?
Last Friday, our research institutions got a notification almost overnight that their funding through the National Institutes of Health would be gutted. This decision threatens our ability to find cures for diseases, to get ahead of public health crises, and to hire and retain talent. I think it was made rashly and irresponsibly, without really understanding what the impact would be.
Slashing those funds won't make research more efficient. Instead, it is going to cripple our ability to treat and cure horrific diseases.
Dartmouth College, which is in Hanover, NH, is one of our preeminent research institutions in the country. Last year, Dartmouth received nearly $100 million in NIH funding to help with its cutting-edge research to treat diseases like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and Alzheimer's. This NIH decision--this decision by the Trump administration will cut Dartmouth's funding by $38 million. And we don't know what the future impact of that would be.
Will we miss the next cure for pediatric cancer? Will we fail to advance treatments in Alzheimer's?
What we do know is that this has an immediate impact on the people living in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire. More than 1,300 employees are supported by Federal grants at Dartmouth, and the vast majority of these are supported by the National Institutes of Health. The job loss, the economic impact that will result from this decision will be devastating.
And, sadly, once these jobs are gone and the researchers leave, there is no going back because they are going someplace else. They are going overseas.
But we, unfortunately, know that RFK supports this decision because he has publicly supported gutting NIH staff and research. If Robert Kennedy is confirmed, I fear he will do nothing to push back or to reverse these reckless decisions.
The Secretary of HHS also holds immense power over ensuring that women in our country have the ability to access reproductive health services, including abortion. Interestingly, I thought this was something that RFK and I agreed on, but now I am not clear what he supports.
He used to proudly say that he was pro-choice, but since being nominated, that belief seems to have disappeared overnight. The only thing I think he truly believes is in his desire to do whatever Trump wants, even if it means compromising his own values.
Women in this country need to know that the Secretary of Health and Human Services will defend our rights to access all the healthcare we need. But at every turn, Republicans and the Trump administration have pushed forward dangerous policies intended to threaten access to full reproductive care.
They put on the Supreme Court the Justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, and at the State level, they have instituted draconian abortion bans that threaten the lives of mothers.
Women are literally dying--dying--from a lack of care because of these bans on our health. This is 2025. How did we get here? I remember before Roe v. Wade. I remember when hundreds of thousands of women died from back-ally abortions. Are we back to that point?
Everyone knows that banning abortion and making women seek dangerous options does not stop abortions. It makes them more deadly. But with RFK at the helm, that is the grim reality we face.
He is not someone I trust to defend a woman's right to access reproductive healthcare. He is not someone I want leading Health and Human Services.
One of the few issues that we have some actually insight into are his views on public health. His dangerous, radical, and wrong beliefs about vaccines are well documented. Every child who gets sick or dies from a disease that could be prevented by a vaccine is a tragedy.
RFK will not only undermine public confidence in vaccines; he indicated that he intends to continue to profit from anti-vaccine lawsuits. It is shameful, and it is corrupt.
We have also heard reports that the Trump administration plans to cut as much as 50 percent of Health and Human Services' staff and decimate the work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC is our first line of defense for public health, most importantly tracking and responding to outbreaks of diseases not only domestically but abroad as well. The Trump administration has already taken steps to gut our global health and aid efforts, from withdrawing from the World Health Organization to cutting the CDC and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
They argue that these efforts are wasteful and unnecessary. But just last Friday, we were notified in New Hampshire that we had only the third confirmed case ever in the United States of clade I monkeypox, or Mpox. The case is travel-related, meaning the patient caught the disease abroad and brought it home.
Sadly, these diseases don't just stop at countries' borders. They don't just happen overseas. They affect us here at home. The Trump administration's efforts to eliminate our public health infrastructure doesn't make America safer, it doesn't make America stronger, and it doesn't make America more prosperous. It does the exact opposite.
And Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is complicit. He is complicit in these efforts, and he will only continue them should he be confirmed.
America deserves a leader at HHS who values science, who protects public health, who defends women's rights to reproductive care--to the full range of reproductive care--and who upholds the integrity of our country's core health systems. RFK, Jr., has shown time and again that he is not that leader.
His dangerous rhetoric on vaccines, his reckless plans to gut critical Agencies, and lack of understanding of basic healthcare make him uniquely unqualified to advance the well-being of all Americans. I urge my colleagues to reject his nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s nomination to serve as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, also known as HHS.
Throughout his entire nomination process, it has become clear that Mr. Kennedy is wholly unprepared to lead this Department, which is charged with promoting, as well as protecting, the health of all Americans.
If confirmed as Secretary, he would be tasked with managing programs that millions of Americans depend on each and every day, including Medicaid and Medicare; the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC; the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA; the National Institutes of Health, or NIH; as well as a number of other initiatives aimed at preparing for and responding to public health and medical emergencies. In total, HHS has a nearly $2 trillion budget and manages more than 90,000 employees. HHS is an extremely, extremely complex organization that requires a leader with expertise on how these critically, critically important programs are actually administered.
Yet, during his hearings before the Senate Finance and HELP Committees, Mr. Kennedy showed his severe lack of knowledge and understanding about the most basic of Federal health programs. Mr. Kennedy could not answer the most basic questions about how the Medicaid Program works or how it benefits more than 70 million Americans who depend on health insurance.
At a time when Republicans are proposing drastic cuts to the Medicaid Program to pay for their tax cuts to billionaires, we need a Secretary who not only knows how the program works but will protect the access to healthcare services it provides for children and some of the most vulnerable people in our country. It is very clear Robert Kennedy, Jr., is not that Secretary.
During his nomination process, Mr. Kennedy also made it clear he does not understand the differences between the
Amid ongoing threats from Republicans to privatize Medicare, we need a Secretary who will protect this program that generations of seniors have counted on to get care and generations to come that are paying into that fund for their future.
Mr. Kennedy's lack of experience and basic understanding of our Nation's healthcare system is, to say the least, extremely alarming. We cannot confirm a nominee who doesn't even know the most basic answers about programs that he is actually in charge of administering.
Since Mr. Kennedy was nominated to lead HHS, I have heard from thousands of my constituents from every corner of Michigan--from densely populated cities to some of the most rural areas in our State-- who are deeply concerned about how his plans for the Department would impact families. For example, I have heard from countless folks about the rising cost of healthcare that is squeezing Michigan families' budgets. Healthcare prices are rising faster than inflation, making it even harder for people to get the care that they need.
I have heard from a constituent who has operated a food pantry in her community for 13 years. She worries about what will happen to the people that she serves if they do not have access to the food security programs made possible by HHS. In her letter, she shared that most of the people in her pantry services are literally one ER visit or one car breakdown away from being able to feed themselves or their families.
Public health initiatives are a lifeline for so many in Michigan as well as across our country. When our neighbors have access to basic health resources, it allows them to focus on improving their lives, whether that is gaining meaningful employment or getting an education. So we need an HHS Secretary who is focused on improving access to Medicaid and expanding the premium tax credits for the Affordable Care Act that allows millions of Americans to access affordable healthcare.
That clearly is not Robert Kennedy. He would not be that Secretary. Instead, he believes that Americans would rather be on privatized, for- profit healthcare.
HHS is also in charge of providing mental health services and support to communities all across our country. Unfortunately, we have a mental health crisis impacting Americans today, with record high levels of mental illness and suicides, especially among our youth.
I received a letter from a social worker in Michigan who helps students who were traumatized by the horrific shootings at Oxford High School in Michigan and at Michigan State University. She is worried that, without proper mental health resources, Americans who have been impacted by senseless gun violence--whether at school, at their places of worship, at nightclubs, or at shopping malls--will grieve and struggle alone.
Unfortunately, Mr. Kennedy has only further stigmatized these important resources, even making comments during his confirmation hearing linking an increase in school shootings to an increased use of antidepressants. Mr. Kennedy's ideas would only worsen the mental health crisis that we are seeing today.
Instead, we need a Secretary who will invest in SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. We need a Secretary who will ensure that everyone has access to the programs and health professionals needed to address this mental health crisis. Robert Kennedy, Jr., is not that Secretary.
HHS oversees our Nation's major medical research, helping to advance breakthroughs in science and development of new treatments for deadly diseases, from childhood cancers to Alzheimer's. Research institutions across my home State of Michigan are conducting critically important research to improve health outcomes for Americans who suffer from these diseases.
A Michigan scientist who specializes in CDC research contacted my office. They fear that if Mr. Kennedy is confirmed, it could impact their ability and the ability of thousands of researchers all across our country to conduct medical research that is literally saving lives.
In a matter of weeks, we have already seen the Trump administration freeze funding and halt critical work at the National Institutes of Health and its research partners across the country. We need a Secretary who will fight to do this important research moving forward, research to cure cancer, to treat deadly viruses, and to address cardiovascular disease. Mr. Kennedy is not--he is not--that Secretary.
Advancing medical research is especially important today as we face increased cases of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases like measles. And despite this, Mr. Kennedy has time and time again sown doubt and promoted dangerous lies about the safety of vaccines.
My constituents are alarmed at what that will mean for their families. A concerned mother-to-be--who wrote to me and my office when she was 38 weeks pregnant--told me that Mr. Kennedy's long history of spreading dangerous medical disinformation and undermining public health initiatives is directly at odds with how she plans to keep her future child from infectious disease.
I also heard from a constituent who was born before the polio vaccine was approved. She said that, to this day, she can still remember the relief on her mother's face when the polio vaccine became available. This moment has stuck with her throughout her 30-year career as a registered nurse, where she has made it her life's work to study and safely administer vaccines in her community.
Let's be clear. Let's be absolutely clear. Vaccines are scientifically proven to protect against diseases like chickenpox, polio, influenza and, yes, COVID-19.
We have eradicated deadly diseases and protected our children due to incredible scientific advances in vaccine research. But now vaccine skeptics like Mr. Kennedy have risen to prominence, discouraging people from getting safe, proven vaccines, and putting every American's health at risk when it comes to infectious diseases.
We need a Secretary who understands the effectiveness of vaccines and who will do more to prevent these diseases through routine childhood immunizations. Mr. Kennedy is not that Secretary, and, if confirmed, Mr. Kennedy has made it perfectly clear that he will stand in direct opposition to this evidence-based medicine.
Mr. Kennedy's falsehoods about basic public health practices have impacts that stretch far beyond our physical health. Another constituent, a clinical therapist, said she is seeing firsthand the devastating impacts that misinformation can have on mental health, adherence to treatment, and overall patient well-being. Specifically, she mentioned that ``the spread of falsehoods about vaccines, psychiatric care, and medical service fuels distrust in lifesaving interventions, exacerbates existing mental health crises, and hinders efforts to connect patients with effective, evidence-based treatments.''
I have even heard from parents who are concerned about Mr. Kennedy's narrative suggesting vaccines cause autism. Because he has given credibility to these lies and questioned facts from scientists and doctors, these parents worry that their children will not receive the most basic, routine care they deserve.
In the midst of so many healthcare challenges, from prescription drugs to mental health, to various public health threats, we cannot afford to have someone as unprepared as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in charge of all these public health Agencies.
Even well-respected organizations know that Mr. Kennedy would be an absolute disaster for our public health. Take the American Public Health Association, for example. In a letter, they said:
We simply cannot afford to have someone as unqualified as Robert Kennedy, Jr., be in charge of our top public
I urge my colleagues to judge Mr. Kennedy on his lack of qualifications. It is clear he simply does not have the expertise, the training, or even the leadership skills necessary to lead a Department as important as HHS.
We need a Secretary who will protect the health of Americans. Robert Kennedy is not that Secretary, and if he is confirmed to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, the American people will ultimately pay the price with their health.
I urge my colleagues to join me in voting no.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, just over 5 years ago, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., traveled to the Pacific island Samoa. Mr. Kennedy was on a mission to spread baseless and debunked conspiracy theories about the safety and efficacy of children's vaccines.
Trading in his esteemed family name and peddling himself as some sort of expert, Mr. Kennedy discouraged parents in Samoa from vaccinating their children. The impact of Mr. Kennedy's visit was undeniable. Health providers in Samoa reported that anti-vaccine voices ``got louder'' after his visit, and the rate of measles vaccinations for eligible 1-year-olds in Samoa fell to under 33 percent--well below herd immunity.
Five months after Mr. Kennedy's visit, Samoa had a massive measles outbreak, with 5,000 of its citizens contracting the disease and 83 Samoans dying, the vast majority of whom were children under the age of 5.
During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Mr. Kennedy doubled down on his denialism, claiming, ``We don't know what was killing'' those children in Samoa.
Mr. Kennedy also claimed in written responses to Senate questions that ``my words had nothing to do with vaccine uptake in Samoa or with the 2019 epidemic.'' But the current top health official in Samoa has denounced Mr. Kennedy's characterization of the measles outbreak in his country and Mr. Kennedy's role in it as ``an outright lie'' and ``a total fabrication.''
As someone with a background in science but more importantly, just as a father of two young men, I am horrified by this story. The measles vaccine has been one of the most successful public health and science stories of the last century. One vaccine administered in two doses now provides protection against four devastating diseases: measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, nearly twice as many young people died from measles as from polio. Thanks to incredible scientific research and medical advances, we now have a vaccine that is proven to be safe and effective at protecting our kids from these deadly diseases. This vaccine has largely eradicated the measles outbreaks that used to result in the devastating loss of babies and young children--that is, until anti-vaccine crusaders like Mr. Kennedy started promoting phony science and conspiracy theories in places like Samoa.
Over the last two decades, thanks in large part to Mr. Kennedy, this anti-science movement has moved from the darkest corners of the internet into the mainstream. The Samoan story provides us a heartbreaking example of just what is at stake if we give this movement's leader a national platform to spread his junk science.
I hope all of my colleagues take seriously what it would mean to confirm this anti-vaccine, anti-science, snake oil salesman as our next Secretary of Health and Human Services.
As the leader of the largest anti-vaccine organization in the country, the so-called ``Children's Defense Fund''--and I use air quotes for a reason--Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly pushed junk science studies to spread fear and skepticism of vaccines. And it is not limited to the measles. Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly and falsely alleged that safe and effective vaccines for tetanus, for the flu, for COVID, for HPV are dangerous to human health.
Mr. Kennedy has even promoted the completely discredited conspiracy theory that vaccines lead to autism. I want to be really clear that decades of extensive, peer-reviewed, scientific studies have found no connection--zero connection--between vaccines and autism. When he was pressed about this during his confirmation hearings, Mr. Kennedy continued to promote junk science studies rather than walk back his misinformation.
In response to Mr. Kennedy's words in his confirmation hearing, Christopher Banks, the president and CEO of the Autism Society of America, said:
I completely agree with Mr. Banks.
Financial disclosures from his confirmation process have also revealed that Mr. Kennedy has made millions of dollars in referral fees from law firms suing vaccine manufacturers based on baseless conspiracy theories. If confirmed, his own personal financial interests could still be tied to these anti-vaccine lawsuits.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that led to more than a million deaths in the United States alone, Mr. Kennedy campaigned to end the nationwide vaccination effort that helped us save millions more lives. He continued his well-worn and, again, completely evidence-free message that no vaccine is safe and effective. And just like with all vaccines, the COVID vaccines went through independent review and extensive trials to ensure they were safe and effective. If Mr. Kennedy had had his way, we might still be losing thousands and thousands of our family members and neighbors to that virus.
Mr. Kennedy has, again, without any sound evidence also pushed conspiracy theories claiming that antidepressant medications cause mass shootings and chemicals in our water make children gay. If those claims sound nuts, it is because they are.
Mr. Kennedy has said that he is opposed to promoting prescription medications to treat chronic diseases, including anti-obesity medications like Ozempic that are currently used by millions of Americans.
Mr. Kennedy has said that he would eliminate the entire nutrition department at the Food and Drug Administration, jeopardizing the safety of our Nation's food supplies.
Mr. Kennedy has said that he supports gutting the National Institutes of Health, which supports the development of medicines to treat diseases and delivers untold resources to healthcare institutions in New Mexico and every other State in this country.
During his confirmation process, Mr. Kennedy also reportedly made commitments to my Republican colleagues to support restrictions on mifepristone, a medication abortion and miscarriage management drug. Mifepristone has been approved by the FDA for 25 years.
It is true that Mr. Kennedy has made a number of conflicting statements in the past about his personal views on women's reproductive healthcare, but during his confirmation process, Mr. Kennedy signaled to Republican Senators that he will go along with whatever President Trump wants to further roll back women's reproductive rights.
Mr. Kennedy is not who any of us should want to put in charge of our Nation's health and food safety. The Department of Health and Human Services oversees health coverage programs that serve half--half--of all Americans. HHS plays a critical role in overseeing Medicare, overseeing Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. HHS also supports the medical research that helps us to develop the next vaccines, prevent the next pandemic, and find cures for cancer and chronic diseases like diabetes.
We have already seen President Trump, Elon Musk, and his DOGE minions target scientific and medical research at Agencies like the National Institutes of Health. Just last week, we saw them announce an estimated $4 billion cut for health research at universities across the Nation, including
But whether this particular attack holds up in court or not, the Trump administration's intention is clear: dramatic cuts to medical research into treatments and cures that countless Americans are depending upon to save their lives. Mr. Kennedy plans to lead this effort and even to expand on it.
Mr. Kennedy is not who my constituents in New Mexico want to see leading our Nation's health Agency. In fact, New Mexicans have raised their concerns in letters and emails and phone calls day in and day out, and I am going to take a few minutes to read to you from some of these New Mexicans who are terrified about the danger that Mr. Kennedy would pose as our Nation's healthcare Agency leader.
Melissa from Albuquerque is concerned that Mr. Kennedy's past of promoting misinformation about vaccines and his lack of experience will endanger Americans.
Melissa said:
William from Albuquerque, a retired University of New Mexico health communications professor and longtime NIH principal investigator, knows that Mr. Kennedy's harmful rhetoric and lies will hurt public health efforts and lead to unnecessary deaths.
William said:
Jane from Albuquerque is concerned that Mr. Kennedy's lack of experience will negatively impact the health of New Mexicans.
She said:
Mark from Albuquerque, a survivor of polio, knows that the polio vaccine effectively eradicated this relentless and deadly disease. He is worried that Mr. Kennedy's confirmation could stifle future vaccinations like the one that saved his life.
Mark said:
Lori from Las Cruces is also worried that Mr. Kennedy's history of spreading misinformation could harm Americans.
Lori said:
Meghan from Albuquerque, a primary care physician, is worried that Mr. Kennedy's lack of experience and disregard for evidence-based medicine pose a danger to Americans.
Meghan said:
I agree with these New Mexicans that Mr. Kennedy is unprepared, he is unqualified, and he is dangerously unfit to be confirmed as our next Health Secretary--unfit to protect our kids' health from debunked conspiracy theories, unfit to defend women's reproductive rights, unfit to safeguard the future of Medicare and Medicaid, and unfit to continue lifesaving medical research and medical care in my State and across the country.
For all of these reasons, I would urge all of my colleagues to join me in voting no on confirming Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Mr. President, I really care about science. I spent my career as an engineer, as a Navy pilot and a test pilot, and as an astronaut--three jobs where facts matter, where you make decisions based on science, not superstition, because when you are launching off of an aircraft carrier or orbiting the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour, there is no room for conspiracy theories; you have to deal in reality.
In my career, relying on science literally meant the difference between life and death. The same is true for the person who is responsible for our Nation's health. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is responsible for making sure that the best science guides our healthcare, from developing lifesaving medicines to preventing deadly diseases.
This job requires a commitment to science, facts, and to public health, but the nominee before us today, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has spent much of his career doing the exact opposite--rejecting science, spreading conspiracy theories, and putting public health at risk. That is not someone that I want in charge of keeping Arizonans healthy.
That would be his job, by the way--responding to disease outbreaks, approving new medicines and treatments, overseeing healthcare coverage for millions of Arizonans and millions of Americans. So this isn't just some bureaucratic decision that we are about to make; this is about whether the next HHS Secretary will protect public health or undermine it with dangerous misinformation.
Let's be clear about Mr. Kennedy's record. This is not someone who is simply asking questions about vaccines. Healthy skepticism is one thing, and I always told my space shuttle crew members to tell me when they thought I was wrong, to constantly question the way we were doing things. We should be doing the same thing here in the Senate.
But what Mr. Kennedy has engaged in goes far beyond that--far beyond that. Even when presented with definitive science, he has doubled down on conspiracy theories because, for him, that is what paid the bills. He was the chairman of the most well-funded anti-vaccine organization in the country. The group he led has spread false claims that vaccines cause autism, that vaccines cause cancer, and that they cause autoimmune disease. This organization has filed lawsuits to block children from getting vaccinated.
What happens when people believe that? We get outbreaks of disease that we thought was long gone in the rearview mirror.
In America Samoa, he spread misinformation about vaccines during a measles outbreak that killed 83 people. Instead of helping families get lifesaving care, Mr. Kennedy sowed fear and doubt, and then he had the audacity to question whether measles was really the cause of those 83 deaths.
In Texas, right now--right now, today--there is a measles outbreak. It is in a county that has low vaccination rates. So far, all of the cases are in unvaccinated people. Now, we know exactly what causes these outbreaks. It is not science; it is misinformation. It is people like Mr. Kennedy telling parents they can't trust their doctors.
I am thinking about this nomination not as a Senator but as a father and a grandparent. I know how much Arizona families care about their kids' health. All they want us to do is do what is right for their family and for their kids. And I know what it means to trust doctors, to trust medicine, to trust science.
I want my granddaughter Sage to grow up in a world that is safer and healthier than the one before her, where we don't have to worry about diseases that we already know how to prevent. I think about my daughter, her mom, who, like any first-time parent, is doing everything she possibly
When he spreads these conspiracy theories about vaccines and autism, it has cascading effects. Senator Hassan made this point, I think, better than anybody else could. Just last week or the week before, after speaking about her son, who has cerebral palsy, Senator Hassan said:
She continued. She went on and said:
So, you see, the job of HHS Secretary isn't about chasing conspiracy theories; it is about making sure families get the best care possible based on the best science available so we can make progress and live healthy lives.
Folks, here is what makes this even worse--like, a lot worse: Mr. Kennedy--get this--Mr. Kennedy vaccinated his own kids while telling other parents not to. His own cousin, Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, called him a predator for what he has done. That is not leadership, folks; that is hypocrisy.
Here is what Ambassador Kennedy wrote:
She went on:
She continued:
This is Ambassador Kennedy's words.
That was a quote from his own cousin.
The Senate cannot ignore this massive conflict of interest. Mr. Kennedy has personally made millions of dollars from lawsuits attacking vaccines, including the HPV vaccine, which prevents cervical cancer.
And, if confirmed, he would oversee the FDA, the very Agency that regulates the vaccines that he is suing over. That is a direct financial incentive to undermine vaccines, even if it puts people's lives at risk. And he wouldn't commit to removing himself from this equation.
And it is not just vaccines. Mr. Kennedy has made a career of embracing conspiracy theories over facts. He claims--it would be funny in another context. But Mr. Kennedy--get this--claims Wi-Fi and 5G cause cancer. He thinks the COVID vaccine is part of a government plot. He suggested that vaccines are a holocaust.
But, of course, when he was confronted about that, he said he didn't recall saying it. He believes that the people who are running our vaccine programs should be in jail. And when asked about 9/11, one of the most defining moments in our Nation's history, he refused to say who was responsible. And his response? He said:
Well, Mr. President, we cannot put somebody in charge of our Nation's healthcare who doesn't know how to separate fact from fiction. No one in the Senate should be comfortable with that.
But the dangerous misinformation doesn't stop with vaccines. Mr. Kennedy claimed that anti-depressants, not guns, are to blame for school shootings. Let's be clear, folks. There is zero--zero--evidence to support that--none. What we do know and what the data tells us is that in every other developed country, they also have anti-depressants. What they don't have is America's level of gun violence. The difference is not mental health treatment. It is easy access to guns for kids, for criminals, and for dangerous people who shouldn't have them.
Mr. President, my family and I have lived with the consequences of gun violence. My wife Gabby Giffords was nearly killed by a gunman when meeting with her constituents outside a grocery store in 2011. Six people died; 12 were injured. You won't find anyone at that grocery store who believes that an excess of mental health treatment was responsible for that tragedy--not one.
Gabby and I have sat in living rooms of parents who have lost their children in mass shootings, and we have fought for real, commonsense gun safety laws that can save lives.
Just like Senator Hassan, I will not stand here and let conspiracy theories distract from real solutions. And this is the core of the problem. Mr. Kennedy treats healthcare like it is a conspiracy theory.
Mr. Kennedy is not the person who should be running the Department of Health and Human Services. It is very clear. If Mr. Kennedy was simply a private citizen saying these things, that would be one thing. It would still be a problem, by the way. But this is someone who wants to be in charge of all of our healthcare.
And if his dangerous views weren't enough, he doesn't even understand the weight of the job he is applying for. In his confirmation hearing, he didn't know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. He didn't understand the different parts of Medicare and what they provide for seniors. He didn't know what a community health center was. He couldn't articulate a basic managing plan for HHS's $2 trillion budget.
He wouldn't answer as to whether he will negotiate for lower drug prices for seniors. And that means, if you are a senior, with him in charge you might see higher drug prices.
Mr. Kennedy does not have a medical degree, and he has no experience--zero experience--in healthcare policy. So this isn't just about bad ideas; it is about dangerous ideas and the fact that he is completely unprepared to do this job.
We also learned at his confirmation hearing that Mr. Kennedy won't make decisions based on science, data, and facts or what is best for our public health. Instead, he will do whatever President Trump tells him to do. Over and over again, when asked about his policies, he didn't give answers based on what he believes is right. He said:
On reproductive health:
This is a nominee who traffics in conspiracies, who doesn't know much about the Agency he is nominated to lead, and who has said he will just do whatever he is told which, considering what we heard all along, that President Trump has a ``concept'' of a healthcare plan--it is not a real plan. But we still don't know what that is. Now, that, to me, feels like a big problem.
Mr. President, we need an HHS Secretary who will lead with facts, not fear; who will lower the price of prescription drugs or fight to do that; and fight to reduce healthcare costs and not to go along with efforts to take health insurance away from kids and people with disabilities; who will build trust in our healthcare system, not undermine it.
Mr. Kennedy has built a career out of rejecting science, spreading misinformation, and profited off of fear. He has compared vaccine scientists to Nazis. He has refused to say if 9/11 was a conspiracy theory. And when it comes to leading this Nation's healthcare system, he has no plan, no knowledge, and no independence; and he says he will do whatever President Trump tells him to do.
So my colleagues, we all have to ask ourselves: Are we really willing to put the health of American families in his hands; are we? I know my answer, and I urge everyone in this Chamber to think very hard about theirs.
Mr. President, I yield 30 minutes of postcloture debate time to the Democratic leader.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
Mr. President, if you go back exactly 20 years ago today, I could tell you exactly where I was. I was a patient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
I was staring at the beige-colored walls. And amidst the pain in every inch of my body, I was trying to muster the strength to sit up or to take a step or even just to breathe. I spent months and months and months in that hospital room, hooked up to machines, getting wheeled in and out of surgeries, learning how to live again in my new post-shoot- down world.
But despite it all, looking back, I consider every one of those days in that hospital room lucky days because, when the worst happened to me--when that RPG exploded in my lap in Iraq and I needed serious, sustained medical attention to survive the hour, the day, the year, I had healthcare I could rely on.
The same cannot be said for countless of Americans--Americans whose health costs have already been too high and whose access to care is at even greater danger if this Chamber is foolish enough to confirm Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as our next Secretary of HHS. Put simply, Mr. Kennedy cannot be trusted with the grave, grave responsibility that comes with this job. He cannot be trusted with our lives. He is focused on pushing his agenda, regardless of the cost to middle-class Americans. And if this man is confirmed, more Americans will die preventable deaths because of his policies.
Next month will mark the 5-year anniversary of when COVID shut down our Nation. In this moment, it is dangerous, reckless, and heartless to everyone who lost a loved one in the pandemic to even consider nominating a guy who has stated that ``no vaccine is safe and effective.''
And if our Health and Human Services Secretary refuses to ensure children are protected against ``preventable yet deadly'' diseases like measles, RSV, whooping cough, or polio, it will be our kids, not Mr. Kennedy, who pay the price.
I have gotten letter after letter from my constituents, begging me to try to reason with my colleagues, to do whatever I can to prevent a man so ignorant of all things science and medicine from holding a position of such power over our children's next breath.
One pediatrician in Illinois wrote to me:
Another said:
The stories, the letters of avoidable tragedies go on and on. Imagine how much worse the heartbreak will become under a guy who acts like the term ``vaccine'' is a swear word.
The only reason that Kennedy is even up for confirmation is because he, like Elon Musk, decided to throw his dignity to the wind and bow down at Trump's altar. And because of that, he gets to be yet another rich guy with too few qualifications and too much power, somehow now charged with leading our government.
Trump is running this country like the mob: Kiss his ring. Pledge your unyielding loyalty. Get made.
It is just that, this time, you get made into a Cabinet Secretary.
Well, Kennedy has given Trump his fealty. So why would any of us ever think he would have the courage to stand up to Trump if the President issues an order that actively harms everyday Americans? How could any of us actually believe that Kennedy would fight back against Trump's worst instincts when Kennedy himself has proven, time and again, that he believes more sycophancy than science?
Now, Americans are going to be the ones to suffer because, now, with Kennedy's confirmation, even programs as popular, effective, and vital as Medicaid will be in even greater danger.
The Republicans told us in Project 2025 that they would come for Medicaid, and this is the rare case when the GOP has actually kept its word--putting at risk roughly 80 million Americans who rely on Medicaid, Americans in red States and blue, in big cities and small towns, and folks who may have never heard of RFK, Jr., but who will certainly feel the effect when he rips away the healthcare their family so desperately needs.
Medicaid is a lifeline for kids, for pregnant women, for people in nursing homes, for Americans with disabilities. The Republicans don't seem to care about any of that. It is obvious that Donald Trump has never stayed up late at night, hunched over the kitchen table with a calculator in one hand and a medical bill in the other, praying to figure out a way to afford his child's insulin. No, of course not.
With every passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer that Republicans care more about tax breaks for the billionaires they pal around with on the golf course than prescriptions for the middle-class folks who actually work at Mar-a-Lago. While that teacher in Peoria lies awake at night trying to work out how she can afford her father's home care now that he can no longer get those services through Medicaid, while that new mom in Chicago who has just learned she has stage 3 cancer and is trying to find a second job so she can afford both diapers for her newborn and her own chemotherapy, Donald Trump and Elon Musk will be too busy lining their already full pockets to care.
To my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I am sure many of you have faced health crises of your own. I am sure many of you have had a parent who has been sick or a nephew who has been in a car crash or a spouse who has been in need of an emergency C-section or a child who has relied on an autoimmune injector. Imagine if your loved ones hadn't had care they could rely on in the moment, and then ask yourself how you can sleep soundly tonight if you vote to further the agenda of a couple of rich guys who so clearly don't care about making America healthy. They only care about tipping it even more in favor of the wealthy. They are not bringing back the good old days of Reagan; they are just bringing back the days of dying from the measles. And they are certainly not making America great again; they are making America sick again. That is the Trump-Kennedy promise.
I care about my constituents' ability to afford their prescription medications, their ability to get the vaccines that will keep them alive through the next pandemic, their ability to survive those worst- case scenario health moments without going broke in the process.
So for all of those reasons and a thousand more, I will be voting no on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s nomination. If my Republican colleagues care about any one of those things, too, then they will have no choice but to do the same.
Mr. President, I have received a number of messages from my constituents describing what access to Medicaid means to them and their families. I would like to close by asking unanimous consent that they be printed in the Congressional Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, today, we are here to discuss President Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
If confirmed, Mr. Kennedy would be in charge of a Department with the power to, well, regulate the food we eat, the medicines we take, and the vaccinations we depend upon. He would oversee Agencies that provide healthcare to almost 170 million Americans, including hundreds of thousands of Nevadans who are on Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
I am here today to oppose Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as our next Secretary of Health and Human Services. Confirming him would have disastrous consequences for our public health, for our seniors who rely on Medicare, and for our families who get their healthcare through Medicaid.
Let's start out with his lack of qualifications. Mr. Kennedy has never worked in healthcare or the Federal Government. He is probably best known for his skepticism of vaccines and spreading dangerous conspiracies and outright lies. Mr. Kennedy's history of promoting anti-vaccine misinformation is well-documented and deeply troubling.
Vaccines have saved millions of lives throughout history, and they remain one of the most effective tools we have to protect public health. Yet Mr. Kennedy has spent years promoting debunked claims linking vaccines to autism, cancer, allergies, and autoimmune diseases. He has spread lies about vaccine safety, making people fearful and increasing rates of unvaccinated people, which put all of us--all of us--at risk.
He has previously stated that ``no vaccine is safe and effective.'' He said that the polio vaccine ``killed many, many, many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.'' Mr. Kennedy has called the COVID vaccine the ``deadliest vaccine ever made.'' This rhetoric isn't just reckless; it is dangerous.
If Mr. Kennedy had been around during the first Trump administration, he would have undermined President Trump's Operation Warp Speed and efforts that helped us end the pandemic.
He doubled down during his confirmation hearing. Even though he was asked multiple times, Mr. Kennedy refused to acknowledge that vaccines don't cause autism.
He has also engaged in Holocaust distortion to push his dangerous views. While attending an autism conference, he was asked why the CDC wasn't acknowledging autism as an epidemic.
He said:
Frankly, these aren't the words of someone you want to be in charge of America's public health. These are not the words of someone you want anywhere near the White House or anywhere near our healthcare, our safety.
He has even gone so far as to falsely suggest that certain antidepressants are behind the rise in school shootings and that certain chemicals in the water might be part of why more young people are identifying as transgender, neither of which is backed by any science. We can't allow someone who spreads this kind of vitriol and dangerous misinformation to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, but his problematic views are just the start.
During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Kennedy was also asked about his understanding of Medicare and Medicaid. He was just asked if he knew about it. Well, he struggled--struggled, mind you--to remember which program covered older and disabled Americans. He struggled to remember which program provided for low-income people. This is Medicare and Medicaid--not something that is so brand new. Even Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., should know what it is because Medicare and Medicaid are not mere government programs; they are a lifeline for millions of Americans, including our seniors, our parents, our grandparents, people with disabilities, families in need, including half of all children and around 40 percent of all babies born in this country. Why would we trust someone with the future of Medicare and Medicaid when he doesn't even understand the basics of the system he would oversee? This makes no sense.
We can't overlook the broader impact of Mr. Kennedy's and President Trump's proposals on medical research, safety, and innovation. We are already seeing devastating attempts to go after the National Institutes of Health, or the NIH--the very institution that has pioneered lifesaving research in areas like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. This is not just any research; this is lifesaving research. We are talking about research and clinical trials in my home State, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and at the University of Nevada, Reno, to better understand Alzheimer's disease and improve care for patients. We are talking about advancing breast cancer therapy at the University of Nevada, Reno, and clinical trials on treating and preventing cancers at the Southern Nevada Cancer Research Center.
You know, I lost my mother to cancer, and I lost my brother to leukemia. I think it is shameful that this administration, enabled by RFK, Jr., would target research into these deadly diseases which have cost lives in my family. I don't want anyone to go through what I went through. I want other people's families--their parents, their siblings, their friends--to be able to live, and we know lives are saved every day because of investments in research and those clinical trials and what the NIH does. I want people to live because of the research. It matters.
Mr. Kennedy has also proposed radical changes to the Food and Drug Administration--the Agency in charge of the food we all eat and keeping it safe. Just like many of the other reforms proposed by Mr. Kennedy, his suggested changes to the FDA, while they are based largely on the conspiracy theories he peddles, include clearing out entire Departments, like the Food and Nutrition Center, which is responsible for preventing foodborne illnesses and ensuring that chemicals in food--the food we all eat, every single one of us all around this country, every day, from young to old and everywhere in between--that our food is safe. How does dismantling this keep any of us safe? How does it keep any of us healthy?
Mr. Kennedy has an overarching plan to gut the funding for the FDA, which will severely limit regulation and safe implementation of new drug trials and medications. This could lead to dangerous drugs flooding the market, putting countless lives at risk.
The role of the Health and Human Services Secretary is one of profound responsibility, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has undermined the very foundations of our public health system. Mr. Kennedy's vision for the future of our healthcare system--well, it was to undermine Medicare and Medicaid. He wants to slash cancer research funding. He wants to push dangerous public health conspiracies. These are visions and these are things that I cannot support and that no one should support.
We all want a healthier future for America, one that both prevents diseases and where we can think about curing diseases, where we can do preventive medicine, curative medicine, where we can have that hope for folks whose mother gets lung cancer in the future, that she might live, or leukemia in the future, that their brother might live. Mine didn't, but I hope that they didn't die in vain because the research that goes on will help others, and I want us to be able to cure diseases for the ones we love.
So that is why I cannot in good conscience support Mr. Kennedy's nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do the same. The stakes couldn't be higher. Our very lives and the lives of our loved ones may just depend on it.
Mr. President, I yield 30 minutes of postcloture debate time to the senior Senator from Oregon.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I stand here in strong opposition to the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to serve as the Secretary of Health and Human Services for the United States of America.
The American people know that our healthcare system is broken. Families have to work through too much health insurance redtape, only to be denied care or forced to pay out of pocket.
Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Families are saddled with medical debt from prices that are too high and burdened by quality of care that is too low. When they need to get an appointment, they have to wait months, drive hours, or simply go without the care which they need.
Pharmacies, hospitals, and community health centers struggle to keep their doors open, and communities are watching health providers and workers burn out under the strain of a healthcare system that is increasingly being sold out to greedy investors and the billionaire class.
The American people deserve a real healthcare system, not the current sick care system. And they deserve leadership who will recognize all of these problems and commit to solving them.
Instead, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are only making things worse.
To Elon Musk, ``move fast and break things'' is not in the U.S. Constitution. That is why these Federal district court judges are stopping your actions.
In Trump's first 3 weeks in office, he has taken illegal and unconstitutional action that disrupted lifesaving health research, sent Musk and his DOGE acolytes to make cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, cut off Federal funding for community health centers, and used discriminatory fearmongering to threaten Federal funding for hospitals and health providers just trying to provide care for their patients.
Every chaotic decision, every cut, every illegal action are all to make it easier for this administration to work alongside congressional Republicans to slash and burn our core healthcare programs. They are not doing this to make things better for everyday Americans. It is Robin Hood in reverse. They are working to take from those who need it the most just to give billions more in handouts for defense contractors and their billionaire donors.
They want hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for billionaires. They want to increase defense spending by $150 billion-- more nuclear weapons, more. But then, in turn, they say: Where are we going to get the money? They say: Ah, we are going to Medicaid. We are going to the Affordable Care Act. We are going to community health centers. We are going to go to the programs that actually do protect people.
More nuclear weapons aren't going to protect people; it is having access to the healthcare system that can help protect their families.
Trump and Musk and Republicans, they are going to call it ``efficiency'' or they will call it ``transparency'' or they will say it is just adding basic requirements to Medicaid. This is all code--the code for ``cuts.''
Efficiency, transparency are--just be honest about it, Elon; just be honest about it, President Trump--cuts to programs.
They keep saying there are all kinds of waste in the system. Well, point it out to us; we will cut it out for you. Give us the list of the programs you want to have cut because there is waste, and we will do it. But do you want to know what they don't want to say? They don't want to say that they want to cut Medicaid. They don't want to say they want to cut clean air, clean water--the programs that protect ordinary people. They want to call it waste. We are going to call it out for what it is.
Where are they going? They are going to the programs that help provide the healthcare for ordinary Americans--cuts to healthcare that ordinary Americans rely upon. And when Americans have to wait longer for care, when they have to pay more, or watch the only hospital in their community shut down, the blame for what will happen will lay at the feet of the politicians who put self-interest above the interest of the American people.
Rather than consider a nominee who would seriously protect and preserve the health of the American people, Donald Trump nominated yet another enabler to his Cabinet, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who, instead of standing up to the Trump-Musk chaos, will only add fuel to Donald Trump's ``Make America Sick Again'' campaign because that is what it is, ``Make America Sick Again.''
Ralph Waldo Emerson from Massachusetts, he said: Health is the first wealth. Well, that first wealth is going to get looted so billionaires get even richer.
Serving as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is an immense responsibility. The Agency oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Food and Drug Administration; the National Institutes of Health, which is made up of 27 institutes and centers. Each decision that a HHS Secretary makes would have a huge impact on our healthcare system.
Run well, HHS ensures medications are safe and effective; keeps workers and students and seniors safe; protects the public from global pandemics or disease outbreaks; guarantees hospitals, doctors, and community health centers provide safe quality care; and funds research that will build the foundation to accurately diagnose patients, better treat cancer, cure Alzheimer's, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. That is what it is supposed to be all about, not freezing that funding, not cutting that funding, but ensuring that the researchers have the funding they need because researchers' medicines fields of dreams from which we harvest the findings gives hope to families that we will find a cure for those diseases that have run through their family's medical history.
We know that HHS as Health and Human Services, but it also stands for ``human health security.'' The stakes of leadership are life and death. But instead of nominating a serious and qualified candidate, Trump selected a candidate who questioned the well-proven conclusion that HIV causes AIDS, made millions by spreading lies about vaccines, compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany, said Wi-Fi in cell phones caused ``leaky brains,'' threatened to remove fluoride from drinking water, and made baseless claims about medication for depression, that it would lead to mass shootings.
Mr. Kennedy's track record shows that he is a danger to the health of America. He would make America sick again.
In June of 2019, he went to Samoa on a trip arranged by anti-vaccine activists. He used that trip to spread lies about the measles vaccine to the Samoan Prime Minister and Director General of Health. He and the organization he led amplified activists who spread false information about the measles vaccine. And after a measles outbreak broke out in Samoa and 16 people died, rather than intervene and help, Mr. Kennedy sent a letter to the Prime Minister to blame these deaths on the vaccine rather than the absence of vaccines.
The death toll in Samoa grew to 83. Volunteers in New Zealand sent tiny coffins to help bury the dozens of children who died. A New Zealand vaccinologist later said the impact of Mr. Kennedy's role in the outbreak was ``devastating.'' In a moment, when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., could have used his influence for good, he fueled disinformation that cost lives.
When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was asked about Medicare and Medicaid, he could not answer questions in his confirmation hearing, the most basic questions, demonstrating that he would be at HHS only to make whatever cuts that Trump and Musk and DOGE dictate at the expense of the healthcare of the American people. Now he is in line to be the No. 1 healthcare official in the United States. That would be a disaster.
Mr. Kennedy has reportedly given reassurances on his position on vaccines or on his position on food and chronic disease.
To my colleagues, I would say this: We cannot address chronic disease if we are slashing Medicare and Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act or recklessly cutting off funding from hospitals and community health centers.
If we are battling vaccine misinformation, it will make it much more difficult to take on chronic disease, like heart disease or diabetes. The long-term impact of food on children's health doesn't matter if children are dying from preventable infectious diseases because their families believed misinformation spread by the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Even with the promises he has made on the vaccine misinformation, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has not demonstrated that he will fulfill his promises. He has used his position to lead people down the dangerous path of vaccine misinformation. And when asked about his role in the Samoa measles outbreak, he lied. The stakes are too high to take a risk on this nominee.
I hear from people in Massachusetts who rely on our healthcare system: single mothers of disabled children relying on Medicaid--also called MassHealth in Massachusetts--to make sure their child gets care. I hear from people living with cystic fibrosis or parents of children on the autism spectrum or with Down syndrome who could only afford their medication or coverage with MassHealth Medicaid coverage. For them, Medicaid is the lifeline. And when that lifeline is cut, their lives get harder. That is what this administration is aiming to do with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in the lead.
The American people deserve more than what they have now. They should be able to get healthcare when they need it, and they should not have to worry that it is available. They should be able to go to their doctor or to their pharmacy without running up their debt or being forced to choose between paying their rent or a medical bill.
They should have health providers who aren't too overworked and burned out to provide them quality care. They should have primary care, mental health care, addiction care, dental care, and cancer treatment more available to them without waiting months or traveling for hours or being left to hope for an available clinical trial.
Americans should have unquestioned healthcare access and quality, and I want to deliver on that for every single American. But Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will only make this harder by embracing Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the spread of vaccine disinformation.
I am not alone in my concern. I have received over a thousand calls and emails to my office opposing his nomination. I have also received letters from over 20,000 physicians, including thousands of pediatricians, internal medicine and emergency medicine doctors, representing all fifty States and Puerto Rico, over 800 public health officials; 75 Nobel Laureates oppose his confirmation. Chairs of pediatric departments across the country; statements from the Massachusetts Teachers Association, representing over 11,000 educators; and the national nurses union, representing 225,000 nurses, all oppose Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Every single one of them expressed concern and dismay about having a Secretary of Health and Human Services who doesn't believe in vaccines that save lives.
We need to listen to the people on the frontlines: the health providers who have dedicated their lives to serving their patients; the researchers, who have committed to finding lifesaving treatments and cures; and the educators who care for our Nation's children each and every day. They are all saying no to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He is unqualified, and his confirmation would be dangerous to the health of our Nation.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I come to the floor with sadness and anger because we are here to consider the nomination of a person who, very practically and unfortunately, is unworthy and unqualified and unprepared for this position.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will, in fact, betray the trust and credibility of the office he has been nominated to fill. He has already shown that he lacks the trust in science and the adherence to the truth that is so important because this office is, fundamentally, about advocating for public health, informing the public, and speaking truth to the American people when there is so much misinformation and disinformation about what will keep Americans healthy and make them healthier.
And he threatens, literally, to make America sick. Whether it is ``Make America Sick Again'' or just ``Make America Sicker,'' the fact is he has supported conspiracy theories and distorted views of what is important in public health that threaten the American people.
The Nobel laureates, the healthcare professionals, the members of his own family--and, in a certain way, I would say, if you have any question about Mr. Kennedy's qualifications, you should listen to Caroline Kennedy and her very powerful comments on his nomination. The fact is that her comments are an indictment. They are literally a warning against his nomination, stating that he is ``addicted to attention and power'' and that he has already denigrated our healthcare system by championing beliefs that cost lives.
Ultimately, the confirmation process so far has confirmed what we already know: that as a source of information, advocacy, and truth, he is less than Americans deserve.
Americans deserve someone who believes in the Affordable Care Act and its premium tax credits that reduce healthcare costs for millions of Americans who otherwise would be left uninsured and unable to afford healthcare. Americans deserve a Secretary who will advance research into lifesaving medicines, treatments, and vaccination.
He is not that person.
Americans deserve a Secretary who will protect Medicaid, which provides healthcare to nearly 1 million Connecticut residents, including 350,000 children--at the very least, someone who knows the difference between Medicaid and Medicare.
He is not that person.
And Americans deserve a Secretary who will protect the sensitive health data of millions of people across the country. When the Department of Government Efficiency, which is an unregulated and potentially unsanctioned organization, gained access to millions of seniors' records at Medicare, Mr. Kennedy purposefully said nothing.
And, at the very least, we need someone who will stand up to President Trump when he spreads misinformation from the White House, someone who will stand up to him when he asks that his Secretary of Health and Human Services do something illegal or immoral. And, clearly, Mr. Kennedy is not that person.
There is a reason that he lacks support from all of these professional organizations and is actively opposed by them--by healthcare professionals, Nobel laureates, and his own family--and that is that he fails the basic test of what Americans deserve: a Secretary that believes in science and advances in modern medicine; a Secretary who won't profit off of the lies he tells about vaccines and science; a Secretary who will not instigate fears of lifesaving vaccinations, while, at the same time, ensuring that his own children are vaccinated and protected; a Secretary who will protect women and reproductive rights; and someone who knows the difference between Medicare and Medicaid.
The kind of leadership that is required from the Secretary of Health and Human Services has never been more important, and that truth- telling advocacy, informing of the public, is more vital than ever.
Now, HHS is a massive Department. The management challenges alone are fierce. He has no qualifications or experience that would justify his appointment.
He would oversee health insurance for millions of people through Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and the Affordable Care Act. He is responsible for promoting the economic and social well-being of children and families, combating the opioid epidemic, supporting people with disabilities, and strengthening the Nation's public health system and emergency response.
The HHS Secretary is responsible for advancing innovative medical research through the National Institutes of Health; the Food and Drug Administration, responsible for ensuring our food and drugs and medical devices are safe and effective; and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which strengthens our public health system and responds to disease outbreaks.
This Agency is a sprawling, massive, challenging management task, and his nomination has spotlighted not only his lack of experience in management but also his long history of dangerous, delusional, and misguided beliefs that would be detrimental to the public and, in fact, a betrayal of public health.
The focus has been on Mr. Kennedy's views on vaccinations and his public denial of well-recognized science. His--
The fact is, vaccines are safe and effective. To be clear, over the last 50 years, vaccines have prevented 154 million deaths, including 146 million among children younger than 5 years old. They undergo exhaustive tests and trials and independent review to determine whether they are safe and effective, and they continue to undergo rigorous review even after approval.
This system works, but Mr. Kennedy has a long history of weakening and weaponizing parental instincts to protect their children and to spread disingenuous and life-threatening misinformation. These lies are attributable to his bad judgment as well as self-enrichment--exactly the opposite of what a Secretary of HHS should exemplify.
He has supported the dangerous, unproven lie that African Americans can use weaker vaccine schedules because Black people have stronger immune systems. This disgusting, appalling claim has been disavowed by the medical community and renounced by the authors of the studies that Mr. Kennedy has incorrectly cited in espousing these lies. But these lies exacerbate racism, and it is a weakness in our public health system that this racism may continue to exist. To exacerbate it threatens people's lives.
The anti-vaccine group he founded has maintained that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is linked to higher rates of autism in Black children--again, a flat-out lie, racialized comments that are intended to stoke fear in the public health system and exploit the very caution that many communities of color approach the healthcare system with. His lies will, again, exacerbate the clear disparities that exist in healthcare for different racial groups, and the inequity of those disparities is a glaring weakness in our current healthcare system.
But he will be spouting those kinds of disinformation--spouting on podcasts, espousing in the media as the highest ranking health official in our country. The notion that the public health of the Nation-- credibility, trust, truth-telling--would be put in the hands of this man is truly frightening.
Now, he has attempted to backtrack since his nomination. He is claiming he is not anti-vaccine. But when he was asked point-blank, under oath, during confirmation hearings, in effect, he ducked and dodged.
Some of my colleagues have claimed that Mr. Kennedy privately told them he will work with existing vaccine approvals and safety networks and that he won't undermine vaccines in his role overseeing them. In private, that is what he said. Why wouldn't he make these commitments during public confirmation hearings? Why couldn't he make them when he was under oath?
The threat is that he will do exactly the contrary.
The American people deserve more than back-door, private, confidential conversations and quiet promises about what the HHS Secretary will do. And the fact is, he has pushed these kinds of debunked theories linking childhood vaccinations to autism, claiming that COVID-19 vaccines were weaponized against specific ethnic and socioeconomic groups, and profiting off lawsuits against lifesaving vaccines that prevent deadly diseases like cervical cancer, measles, tetanus, and chickenpox.
There is no argument from me that there needs to be testing and review and clinical trials for vaccines to be proven safe and effective. But once those tests and trials and independent review take place and are judged to be sufficient to show a vaccine is safe and effective, undermining them is simply contrary to public health.
Now, Mr. Kennedy would also threaten reproductive care and reproductive freedom. During his 2024 Presidential campaign, he consistently downplayed the importance of reproductive health, claiming that abortion was ``just a little issue.''
Abortion was hardly ``a little issue'' for women across the country, especially women who have literally died or come close to death as a result of denial of this essential healthcare and freedom.
The Americans deserve a Secretary of Health and Human Services who respects women and who works against politicians telling women what they can do with their bodies and trusts women to make decisions about what is right for them.
The HHS Secretary, as a matter of fact, oversees the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, a Federal law that mandates that women who need emergency care are entitled to it, whether that emergency care be an abortion or some other treatment.
When he was asked if a woman bleeding out in an emergency room is entitled to emergency care under this law, Mr. Kennedy responded, ``I don't know.'' He should know. Whether sheer incompetence, utter confusion, or just an unwillingness to agree to uphold Federal laws protecting women, that comment and response alone should be disqualifying. It is dangerous, and confirming him in this position could be deadly to women who depend on that program.
He has refused to say that he will protect access to medication abortion. Instead, he has said he would reevaluate the drug. Now, this drug has been safely and effectively used by millions of women for decades. His response is code for making it harder to access or ban it altogether.
He won't commit to protecting women who need emergency medical care. He will not commit to keeping safe and effective abortion medication available. He will limit access to abortion services. His confirmation poses the danger of catastrophic consequences for women.
How can women trust him to protect their interests and safeguard their health? The women of America deserve better.
Mr. Kennedy has a long history of making baseless and damaging claims about the LGBTQ+ community, including the absurd lie that environmental chemical exposure somehow causes children to become gay or transgender. Boggles the mind. Incredibly dangerous to the health and safety of LGBTQ+ youth, but it is his stated belief or has been at various times in the past, and adding to those harmful ideas is his belief that HIV does not cause AIDS.
He has supported bans on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender individuals and spread misinformation about what gender-affirming care actually looks like in the real world. If he continues to spread this unscientific rhetoric as Secretary of HHS, he will cost people their lives.
Members of the LGBTQ community already experience significant health disparities, and Mr. Kennedy's false views on health, sexual orientation, and gender identity would make these disparities--like racial disparity--even worse.
To serve in this position, Mr. Kennedy need not be the world's greatest scientist or the most erudite professor or the most astute researcher, but he needs to have a respect for science and medical professionals. He lacks it.
He made it abundantly clear during his confirmation hearing that he has none of those qualities and, in fact, demonstrated an inadequate understanding of the very programs he is supposed to be administering if he is confirmed, like Medicare and Medicaid.
You know, we have reviewed a lot of nominees as Senators, and we know that they are prepared--they are extensively ``murder-boarded,'' as they say--asked questions in preparation.
You would expect that the nominee to be HHS Secretary would understand the difference between two of the most important and largest health insurance programs in the country that serve millions of Americans every day. He didn't.
The American people deserve better. His decisions, if he is confirmed, will have long-lasting impacts, and he lacks the expertise to lead this Agency and lead America as an advocate, as an informer, as a truth-teller.
Lest you think he will rely on good people who will help him in administering this Agency, he has pledged to fire hundreds of National Institutes of Health employees. He told the Food and Drug Administration workers to ``pack their bags.'' He would like to clear entire Departments of the Federal Government, including the nutrition department at the FDA. He is in
Mr. Kennedy claims to support improving nutrition and combatting chronic diseases, and many of us support those programs to eliminate additives, for example, or provide better nutritional information, front-of-package labels showing nutritional content, and enabling Americans to be healthier by eating better and by being better informed. But instead of surrounding himself with experts, his potential top advisers include people who want to change or abolish the nutrition guidelines, like the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which will bolster industry profits, not health.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans provides science-based advice on what to drink and eat to meet nutrient needs. They promote health. They reduce the risk of chronic disease. This dietary guidance is critically important because three in five adults live with chronic disease. Let me repeat. Three in five adults live with chronic disease that could be improved with better nutrition.
It informs all Federal nutrition programs, meaning that these dietary guidelines impact one in four Americans through programs like the National School Lunch Program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. These programs follow those dietary guidelines because they are based on science. But Mr. Kennedy lacks respect for science. The fact that he espouses better nutrition isn't translated into real-world support for actions that benefit Americans. His opposition to those guidelines benefits the food industry.
Having a science denier surrounded by potentially lobbyists at the helm of this Agency is not going to make Americans healthy again; it is going to make them sicker. It is going to potentially sell them out for profit.
I am disappointed that we are here, as I said at the outset, to be considering someone who is so deeply unqualified and unprepared for a position that is an enormous potential opportunity to improve the health of America. His advocacy could spread the truth, could hold the food industry or pharmaceutical drug industry to higher standards to provide more medicine and treatments and cures at lower prices. He could support research through the NIH instead of advocating that it be cut. He could enable women to have reproductive care instead of dodging or diminishing its importance. He could help eliminate racism and bias against LBGTQ+ people in our healthcare system. There is so much opportunity squandered in this nomination.
I will vote no on Robert Kennedy, Jr. I urge my colleagues to heed the warnings from Americans much better qualified than I am to make this judgment--those Nobel laureates; the professional organizations; the healthcare experts; and, of course, his family, who knows him best--Caroline Kennedy, who spoke with such eloquence and insight. Her incisive and heartbreaking video should be watched by everyone who is about to vote on this nomination.
Mr. President, in Hawaii, thousands of our keiki-- children--attend Head Start, setting them up for lifetimes of success. After the devastating wildfires on Maui in 2023, the U.S. Public Health Service was on the ground within days, providing care to survivors and first responders. On Oahu, the University of Hawaii's Cancer Center is leading on critical NIH-funded research on breast, liver, and lung cancer, studying diseases that disproportionately impact the Native Hawaiian and Asian-American communities. All of these programs are vital for people in Hawaii, and they are all made possible by the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS.
HHS does critical work across our country keeping communities healthy and researching deadly diseases, from cancer to COVID and so much more.
Americans trust HHS because their mission has historically been guided not by politics but by science and data. But already Donald Trump is taking a sledgehammer to HHS and the essential work it does.
For weeks, HHS employees have been prohibited from making any external communications and have been directed to withhold grant disbursements--illegal, by the way--halting critical updates on emerging public health threats and delaying or denying funding for community health centers without explanation.
These edicts are already forcing clinics to consider reducing services and staff or, worse, closing these services, endangering healthcare access for our most vulnerable populations. And just last Friday, the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, announced it would slash indirect cost rates nationwide--funds that keep the lights on and the bills paid at America's medical schools, hospitals, and research institutions, enabling our country to lead globally on biomedical research.
This is lifesaving research. These across-the-board cuts aren't hypothetical. They will harm real people in need of help.
Just yesterday, I spoke with the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine, who explained the catastrophic consequences this cap would have. This illegal action, as I mentioned, would compromise plans for the U.H. Cancer Center to begin offering phase 1 clinical trials in Hawaii for the first time.
What does this mean for the people of Hawaii? For the first time, people in Hawaii will not have to go to the mainland to participate in these trials. But with the help of this NIH funding--now being slashed--for the first time, people of Hawaii would be able to stay in Hawaii to participate in these very important clinical trials.
If allowed to stand, these actions will be catastrophic for our country and for global efforts to combat the spread of diseases, and all of these actions have been taken without a confirmed Secretary in place at HHS.
One would hope the President's nominee to lead such an important Department would be a level-headed individual guided by science and data. Instead, Donald Trump has nominated the total opposite: Robert Kennedy, Jr.
Mr. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist who peddles and profits from conspiracy theories and has a troubling history of misconduct. In his confirmation hearings, Mr. Kennedy appeared not to know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, essential programs that 66 million and 72 million people, respectively, rely on for access to healthcare.
Mr. Kennedy purports to be a proponent of bodily autonomy when it comes to vaccines, as if we know better than scientists about the efficacy and safety of medical treatments.
But Mr. Kennedy's commitment to bodily autonomy suddenly flies out the window when it comes to women's rights to control our own bodies. He has shown he will do Donald Trump's bidding in his war on women and our freedom--where is our bodily autonomy?--as they work to reverse the FDA's approval of mifepristone, which has been used safely for medication abortion for more than 20 years--so much for bodily autonomy.
And it is clear Mr. Kennedy will be guided not by science but by the conspiracy theories he has pursued for decades on vaccines, raw milk, stem cell treatment, and much more.
Vaccines are a modern miracle that have saved an estimated 154 million lives and enabled us to all but eradicate diseases like polio and small pox. But due to the activism of conspiracy theorists like Mr. Kennedy, public trust in vaccines have eroded, endangering countless lives and threatening the herd immunity that protects us all.
I grew up in rural Japan, where we didn't have widespread access to most vaccines. As a child, I remember getting measles, mumps, whooping cough. When one kid in our village got sick, it just spread like wildfire in our village, and all the kids got sick. I know what it means to be vaccinated. To willingly submit our children to such a fate like what happened to us--to me in Japan--would be cruel, counterproductive, and deadly, but Mr. Kennedy seems not to care about those impacts.
We all agree there are things we can do to make our country healthier, and I stand ready to work with my colleagues to do that important work. But eliminating access to healthcare, promoting conspiracy theories, firing researchers, and undermining evidence-
Mr. Kennedy will not ``Make America Healthy Again''--yet another empty slogan. He will, in fact, instead make us less healthy, less safe, and less prosperous. We know this because it is exactly what happened in Samoa after misinformation about vaccines, pushed in part by Mr. Kennedy, led to a deadly measles outbreak there.
Hawaii's Governor, Josh Green, is also a physician, and he traveled to Samoa at the invitation of the country's Health Minister to help stem the consequences of this deadly misinformation. He recently wrote about his experiences in an op-ed in the New York Times, and I would like to read portions of that op-ed now.
Our Governor wrote:
[W]hen vaccination rates fall, preventable diseases can regain a foothold and pose a new danger. And that's precisely what happened in Samoa, after misinformation spread by anti-vaccine activists eroded trust in vaccines and led to the 2019 outbreak. Thousands of preventable cases of measles sprang up, leading to the deaths of 83 people, mostly children. One of the most prominent voices behind the anti-vaccine campaign was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Governor Green goes on to say that:
Governor Green went on to write:
Governor Green concluded by saying:
He is talking about Robert Kennedy--
I thank the Governor for his service to the people of Samoa and for so eloquently describing what is at stake with Mr. Kennedy's nomination.
Our Governor was so concerned that he recently traveled all the way from Hawaii to Washington, DC, to speak to as many Senators that he could directly about what is at stake. Governor Green was that concerned about what this nominee could do to HHS.
During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Kennedy had the opportunity to take responsibility for his role in Samoa's measles outbreak. Instead, he stuck to his old tricks, blaming vaccines and spreading misinformation.
Governor Green is correct. Our children's lives depend on our commitment to vaccinations, and all of our lives depend on the science and research done by HHS. Mr. Kennedy poses a dire threat to that science and, indeed, to the American people.
For those reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote no on his forthcoming nomination.
Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues, to join the many Granite Staters who have written my office and expressed their grave alarm in opposing the nomination of Mr. Kennedy as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is without experience or qualification for this post. He is uninformed and apparently uninterested in the most basic elements of healthcare policy. He entertains and spreads conspiracy theories that virtually everyone in this body knows to be dishonest and dangerous.
In a different time, in a different political moment, with a different President, Members of this Chamber would have joined together to resoundingly reject Mr. Kennedy's nomination. In fact, in a different time, where qualifications and character mattered, Mr. Kennedy's nomination would never have made it to the floor. But here we are.
Today, it appears that Mr. Kennedy will be confirmed and that Members of the U.S. Senate--the so-called world's greatest deliberative body-- will sacrifice the health of our fellow Americans by failing to stand up for science and for the truth.
For even the most skilled and experienced person, running the Department of Health and Human Services is a really daunting task. We expect and trust the HHS Secretary to direct the administration of critical programs like Medicare or Medicaid; to direct research so that we can find cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, and other diseases; to help bring new lifesaving medications to market; to find ways to make medicine and care more affordable; to help ensure that our children grow up healthy and that our parents age with dignity.
When a crisis hits, we look to the Secretary of Health and Human Services for leadership, to help lead the fight against fentanyl or to protect our communities from a pandemic.
There is, perhaps, no aspect of public policy as complicated as healthcare, and there are few aspects of life as fundamental as being healthy.
And to be sure, there are grave healthcare challenges facing our country. The cost of healthcare is too high; the cost of prescriptions, too steep. While we have made extraordinary progress in recent generations, we know that too many diseases still cry out to be cured, and too many people struggle to get the care that they need where and when they need it.
The challenges are real, but progress is possible.
When I was Governor of New Hampshire, I worked with Republicans and Democrats in the legislature to help our State adopt Medicaid expansion. And during the first Trump administration, we came together to end surprise medical billing with a new bipartisan law. Of course, there is much more work to do. The point is that when we work together, embrace commonsense solutions, and have the right leadership, we can forge progress. But it takes hard work. It takes seriousness to tackle a challenge as daunting as healthcare. It takes experience, talent, and ability. We are talking about the health of our country and of our children.
This is a job that requires us to search far and wide across our country to find the right person; someone who is informed, capable, and forthright; someone who has a proven track record of leadership; and someone willing to tell the truth in service to the goal of helping every American to be healthy.
Instead, the President of the United States offered us Mr. Kennedy. It is entirely unclear to me what qualifications Mr. Kennedy brings to this office. He has never run an organization or a business even one- hundredth of the size of the Department of Health and Human Services. He has no background in medicine, science, health policy, or government. Most concerning, though, is his complete and utter lack of even the most basic knowledge of the Department he is supposed to lead or the health policy debates and challenges that our country has been grappling with over the last several decades.
It is not simply that we have been asked to hope that Mr. Kennedy learns on the job. It is not simply that we are being asked to grade Mr. Kennedy on a curve. It is worse than that because even for his confirmation hearings, Mr. Kennedy couldn't be bothered to even do his homework.
During his confirmation hearing, I asked Mr. Kennedy some fairly basic
When it comes to Medicaid, which, among other things, provides coverage for about half of the births in the United States, he wrongly said it was fully, federally funded, which it isn't.
Let me be clear: The administration is asking the American people to place these critical health programs in the hands of a man who has no idea what they even are. That is a big ask. And it is an ask we wouldn't make of our own constituents. No one in this body would hire even an entry-level healthcare staffer who did not understand the basics of Medicaid and Medicare. Why should we exercise a different, weaker standard for the person who is supposed to be in charge of both? Why, with this administration, does the bar go even lower when the office becomes even higher?
If Mr. Kennedy cannot be bothered to learn the basics about Medicare and Medicaid, he will certainly not bother to stand up for them. This administration has made clear that it is willing to gut Medicaid in order to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.
The President's new Director of the Office of Management and Budget has, in fact, proposed that the administration cut Medicaid--a program that provides health insurance coverage for approximately 80 million Americans--by more than one-third. Does anyone think that Mr. Kennedy will be a voice of reason; that he will speak out on behalf of American families and make the case for saving Medicare or Medicaid? He can't even describe what they are.
Mr. Kennedy is an intelligent and educated man. But education and intelligence aren't a substitute for taking the job seriously. If Mr. Kennedy were in the running for a different post, his failure to understand the basics of our healthcare system might not be relevant. But it so happens to be the American people's great misfortune that he is, in fact, being called to serve as the highest public health official in our land.
Mr. Kennedy's lack of qualifications and knowledge about healthcare have real consequences. If confirmed, his lack of preparation, experience, and interest in America's healthcare will leave our country worse off. Our people will be less healthy.
And nobody will feel Mr. Kennedy's careless disregard for the magnitude of his position more than America's women. When I was initially considering Mr. Kennedy's nomination, one mark in his favor was his long record of advocacy on behalf of a woman's fundamental freedom to make her own health decisions. When Mr. Kennedy was in New Hampshire campaigning for President, he told Granite Staters:
But since he came out in support of President Trump, Mr. Kennedy has made a remarkable discovery. He decided at the age of 71 that his long- held belief in reproductive freedom for women was wrong. All of his principles about women making their own choices were suddenly no longer true.
Instead, as the Nation's leading public health official, he has said that he will faithfully and enthusiastically carry out the anti-choice policies of an administration that continues to dedicate itself to undermining and taking away a woman's fundamental freedom.
This isn't a hypothetical issue. In his confirmation hearing, Mr. Kennedy said that he and the Trump administration would be examining the safety of the drug mifepristone, which is used for abortions and in miscarriage care. During the hearing, I showed Mr. Kennedy study after study--stacks--hundreds of pages of research done over the course of decades, all of which demonstrate the safety of this medication. Let me be clear, the safety has been proven. If Mr. Kennedy and the Trump administration continue to persist in studying a drug that is proven to be safe, it is clear that their objection is not with a lack of research; their objection is to the result of that research. So they want to sow doubt about it. They want to sow confusion. And once they do, they will hide behind the very doubt that they have created as a reason for denying women the most basic of human freedoms: body autonomy.
Mr. Kennedy, having sold out his pro-choice principles, will surely help in that effort. He certainly will not stand in the way of it. The debate about reproductive freedom is fundamentally a debate about whether one believes in the basic promise of our Declaration of Independence that all of us are free and equal. The question for Mr. Kennedy and all those who would deny women this basic freedom is whether they believe that women have the capacity and judgment to make their own healthcare and reproductive decisions just as men do.
Make no mistake, Mr. Kennedy did not have a miraculous conversion something like the Apostle Paul's on the road to Damascus on this issue. He just made a cold-blooded, expedient choice to cut a path to power. He decided that the freedom of women was a small price to pay in order to be able to call himself a Cabinet Secretary. I have had good- faith disagreements with friends and colleagues on the issue of abortion, but Mr. Kennedy is different.
Mr. Kennedy has spent his lifetime arguing for a woman's reproductive freedom. But he now abandons what he used to refer to as a core value for a title and for what he, apparently, thinks is more important than freedom--being in Donald Trump's orbit.
Americans have a particular disdain for those who sell out the freedom of their fellow citizens in pursuit of power. We call such people many things. We seldom call them ``Mr. Secretary.'' Even if Mr. Kennedy was not inexperienced, even if Mr. Kennedy had basic knowledge regarding our health system, even if Mr. Kennedy was not willing to imperil freedom for women, members of both political parties should reject his nomination because Mr. Kennedy, who has forged a career of peddling cynicism and conspiracy regarding vaccines, is, perhaps, the most uniquely dangerous man ever nominated to head America's Department of Health and Human Services.
Vaccines are among the greatest achievements in human history, and America has been at the center of that success. Our doctors and scientists were instrumental in helping vanquish smallpox and banish polio. Because of vaccines, more than 20 million people walk today who otherwise would have been stricken with polio. Hundreds of millions of people are alive today because of vaccines. I am reminded of the words of a previous HHS Secretary:
HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who was appointed by President Trump, said those words during his first term. He was right when he said this 6 years ago. But today, Mr. Kennedy asserts that this statement is wrong.
Mr. Kennedy has a long history of dealing in both outright lies and clever half-truths to sow cynicism, mistrust, and confusion regarding vaccines. He has, at various times, discouraged people from getting vaccines for measles and polio.
Mr. Kennedy has led litigation to discredit the HPV vaccine, a vaccine which has led to a dramatic decrease in cervical cancers among young women.
When the pandemic hit, President Trump helped marshal America's scientific resources in Operation Warp Speed to produce a COVID vaccine in record time. This was, in my mind, one of the greatest public health achievements in decades and a real credit to President Trump. But Mr. Kennedy helped lead efforts that attempted to revoke President Trump's COVID vaccine's authorization.
And for more than 25 years, Mr. Kennedy has helped perpetuate the dangerous lie that vaccines cause autism. During his confirmation hearings, my colleagues virtually begged Mr. Kennedy to recant these views. But Mr. Kennedy would not, insisting that if he somehow saw more evidence--only then, perhaps--he might reverse course and tell people he was wrong.
This is a dangerous game that Mr. Kennedy plays. He hides his anti- vaccine conspiracies under a cloak of deniability. Sometimes he outright lies. But most of the time, he insists that he is merely raising questions and that he is simply a man looking for answers. But to borrow from Benjamin Franklin:
When Mr. Kennedy is presented with facts, he ignores them. He ignored the conclusive data that my colleagues showed him proving that vaccines do not cause autism. He, instead, continued to rely on one tiny, outdated, faulty, disproven study from way back in 1998; a study that the Journal that originally published it has since withdrawn to support his claim, instead of relying on the exhaustive studies that have been conducted since then that prove there is no link between vaccines and autism.
It is fine to ask questions. It is often urgently important. But it is not doctors and scientists who are ignoring Mr. Kennedy's questions; it is Mr. Kennedy who is ignoring their answers. Mr. Kennedy's vaccine conspiracies are not a quirky personality or harmless eccentricity, but especially with the authority and megaphone he will have if he is confirmed, it will be a grave danger to the health of our people.
Mr. Kennedy has already spent much of his career taking legal action against safe and effective vaccines. With the full power of the Department of Health and Human Services, it stands to reason that he will use his post to limit access to certain vaccines, pull FDA approval of others, or change guidelines and recommendations concerning what vaccines children should receive.
But more than that, with the platform of HHS Secretary, Mr. Kennedy will undermine public trust in vaccines and will discourage a growing number of parents from getting their children vaccinated. As for Mr. Kennedy's insistence that is simply raising doubts about the safety of vaccines doesn't mean that he is urging people not to get their children vaccinated--well, Mr. Kennedy may be unqualified, but he is not naive. He knows full well that millions of people listen to his words. Millions more will listen should he be confirmed to this office.
And so what happens? How much, Mr. President, does a lie about vaccines truly cost? Let us say that a greater number of Americans become wary of vaccines due to Mr. Kennedy's musings from the seat of the most powerful public health perch in the world. A greater number of families decide that their kids don't need vaccines. Sometimes that will mean just skipping one vaccine. Sometimes it will mean skipping all of them. These parents aren't necessarily conspiracy theorists themselves, but they have read some scary, if untrue, stories online, and as they try to figure out what to do, the most important public health authority in the land chooses to give credence to the lies rather than reassure parents with the truth.
Maybe, as is true with every parent, these parents are worried about their child developing a disability, and now they hear Mr. Kennedy suggest that vaccines maybe cause autism, so they hesitate. They don't return to the pediatrician's office for the next dose of a vaccine that will prevent their child from getting a deadly disease.
As more and more children become unprotected and as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., fails to advocate for safe, effective, lifesaving vaccines, children get sick, they spread the disease, and all of a sudden, we are back to the kind of deadly disease outbreaks that doctors used to witness in the early decades of the 20th century--a time long enough ago wherein many Americans don't realize what it was like to lose a loved one to an illness like measles. There will be more measles outbreaks like the one going on right now in West Texas, or maybe, instead of measles, it will be polio. People will get sick, and people will die. Take a look in a museum at a rusting iron lung. Go to the graves of the unvaccinated measles victims in American Samoa. That is the cost. That is the price of this particular lie.
I also take issue with the notion that Mr. Kennedy's anti-vax cynicism is somehow advancing scientific progress or healthy debate. The truth is that Mr. Kennedy's conspiracies are not particularly new. They are old theories that have been disproven but that Mr. Kennedy keeps alive by continuing to recycle them long after the debate has been concluded. So, no, I don't object to engaging in new debates on unproven science; I object to rehashing old debates on proven science.
Remarkably, during the hearings, Mr. Kennedy and some of my colleagues sought to place Mr. Kennedy in the tradition of great scientific minds like Galileo and Newton, who dared challenge the scientific status quo with their own provocative questions. There is, of course, a key difference. The difference is that Galileo and Newton were right, and Mr. Kennedy is wrong. The evidence vindicated Galileo. The evidence refutes Mr. Kennedy. That difference is what separated Galileo from the village crank. That difference is what separates a witch doctor from a real one.
This never-ending cycle of cynicism--of relitigating old debates about whether vaccines cause autism--doesn't further scientific progress. It doesn't unlock new truths or cures. It keeps us stuck in the past, stuck having the same debates over and over and over again. All that changes is that the mound of evidence disproving Mr. Kennedy grows higher and higher.
In his hearing, Mr. Kennedy said that he wouldn't apologize for asking what he called uncomfortable questions because ``we have massive health problems in this country that we must face honestly.''
The problem is not that Mr. Kennedy is asking uncomfortable questions; the problem is that Mr. Kennedy himself is not willing to accept the answers to them. The problem is that Mr. Kennedy is wasting our time and our money with dishonest and already settled debates, debates that distract us from the task at hand--the task of tackling the real and significant health problems that are facing our country-- because in his lifetime of fearmongering, what good has Mr. Kennedy actually contributed to the mission of public health?
Mr. Kennedy says he wishes to make America healthy again, but when Mr. Kennedy suggested that the polio vaccine gave people cancer, what child did he make healthier? Mr. Kennedy says he is trying to promote vigorous scientific debate. When Mr. Kennedy suggested that the United States of America develop Lyme disease as a bioweapon, what medical breakthrough did that yield? What disease did he help cure then? Mr. Kennedy's vaccine fears garner him headlines, but have they made healthcare more affordable for a single American family?
Think about the hours and resources that Mr. Kennedy has urged his followers to invest in relitigating proven science and what progress could instead have been made if that money were invested in finding treatments and cures to diseases. That is the price of Mr. Kennedy's insistence that we remain frozen in time in our understanding of science.
Mr. Kennedy has not made America healthier in his career thus far, nor will he if he is confirmed. He will make America less healthy, more doubtful, more divided, more cynical, and further away from finding cures and making scientific progress.
We have real healthcare challenges in this country. The American people need healthcare costs to come down. They want to stop having to make impossible choices between making ends meet and getting their children the medications they need. They want it to be easier to get a prompt appointment with a good doctor in their neighborhood who talks with them and doesn't rush them out the door. They want better mental health care in our schools. They want cures. They want their loved ones to stop being held back by chronic diseases. They want to say fewer early goodbyes because of cancer, Alzheimer's, and other diseases. They want to be able to age at home with dignity and high-quality home care.
Making our country more healthy is no small task, but we can do it. We live in a great country. The American people are talented and imaginative. When we work together, we have the capacity to do extraordinary things. We can make our country better. We can save more lives. But we cannot move forward if we confirm a Cabinet Secretary who engages in the same, tired debates over and over again, if we confirm a Cabinet Secretary who goads us into fighting each other rather than fighting for cures or for lower healthcare costs.
If this body confirms Mr. Kennedy, it will, in effect, be declaring that experience doesn't matter and qualifications do not count. It will be ignoring plain truths and suspending our capacity for
If this body confirms Mr. Kennedy, it will be betraying who we are as Americans. It will be sacrificing a better future for the sake of needlessly relitigating the past. It will be confusing a charlatan with a prophet and cynicism with wisdom.
In the end, if this body confirms Mr. Kennedy, more parents will reject vaccinations for their children, more people will get sick, and a growing number of children will likely die.
The exact impact of Mr. Kennedy's confirmation in terms of lives lost or progress thwarted will, of course, be hard to quantify. Regardless, what we do know for certain is that Senators on both sides of the aisle are willing to denounce the lies that Mr. Kennedy has spread, and we saw that in our hearings. But, colleagues, the issue in this moment isn't whether you will stand up against lies; the issue is whether you will stand up to the man who tells them. And in this moment, in this Chamber, it appears that not enough of my Republican colleagues are willing to do that. I hope I am wrong.
I urge my colleagues to reject Mr. Kennedy's nomination.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, I, too, rise to oppose the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
I can only hope that I am half as eloquent and moving as Senator Hassan has been not just here on the floor today but in committee during the confirmation hearing.
I oppose this nomination for his wildly misinformed beliefs and his utter lack of experience. I believe he is fundamentally unfit and unprepared, and Americans will be less healthy if he is confirmed.
Let's begin with, for years, he has made conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine misinformation his calling card, from false accusations that vaccines cause autism to lies that the COVID-19 virus targets specific racial groups. He has founded his own anti-vax organization, authored several books pushing public health conspiracies, and has made millions off anti-vax lawsuits. It all points to a dangerous principle at the core of Mr. Kennedy's beliefs: ``There's no vaccine that is safe and effective.''
As the Presiding Officer knows, my background is in engineering. I am not a scientist, but I am an engineer. As an engineer, I trust the experts who have spent their lives researching, conducting clinical trials, and collecting data.
Through the decades of life-changing discoveries and scientific breakthroughs, one thing has become increasingly, undeniably clear: The single best way to protect the Nation from viral disease is to get vaccinated. It is the reason why, today, hundreds of millions of Americans can live freely without having serious concerns of contracting polio, of contracting smallpox, or of contracting hepatitis.
That used to be a source of pride for the Nation, but in the face of all of the proven science--proven again and again science--Mr. Kennedy has chosen to profit off of fear, and countless parents are being misled into making dangerous decisions for their children.
Look, I get the fear. I am proud to represent California in the Senate, and I am proud to have an engineering background, but I, too, am a parent of three boys. I remember what it was like to hold a baby in your arms and to worry every time there was a sniffle and a cough. I would do anything to protect my children, just as you would do anything to protect yours. But where families have reasonable questions on everything from doctors to diets, Mr. Kennedy simply sees dollar signs.
Now, today, we find ourselves in yet another viral outbreak. A bird flu has shown some early signs of transmission to humans.
I can't think of a worse idea than to install an anti-vaxxer as Secretary of Health and Human Services. His beliefs alone make him unfit to lead HHS, but in addition to that, he is simply unprepared to lead.
Nearly 16 months ago, I was proud to cofound the bipartisan Senate Mental Health Caucus.
Thank you, Senator Tillis; thank you, Senator Ernst; and thank you, Senator Smith, for being cofounders of this caucus.
In the time since then, we have made some significant strides. But before Americans can ever reach out for help in a time of crisis, they have to know that they can access help. So that is on us to make sure that the support, the services, the programs are there for Americans when they need them. We know that Medicaid is the single largest payer of behavioral health services in the Nation.
So at a time when Republicans are looking to cut funding for lifesaving services, I would rather see a fierce defender of Medicaid at HHS. Yet, during his confirmation hearing, Mr. Kennedy failed to show even a basic understanding of Medicaid--not the sources of funding, not the benefits. At one point, he even seemed to confuse Medicaid and Medicare.
Colleagues, I shouldn't have to say this: This is not a ``learn on the job'' nomination.
Well, President Trump knows just how unprepared Mr. Kennedy is for this job. Reporting from Semafor just a few days ago tells us that during Mr. Kennedy's confirmation hearing, President Trump was watching. He saw just how poorly the confirmation hearing was going for Mr. Kennedy. So what did President Trump do? He does what he does best. He leapt into action to distract and divide. He held a press conference simply to throw out the latest controversy to reporters, and it took the attention off and the pressure off of this dangerous nominee.
That is what we are up against, colleagues. Over the next several months, our Nation will face a critical test for some of the most important public health systems in our country.
In the House, Republicans are already floating cuts to Medicaid to pay for even more tax breaks for the rich.
In the White House, President Trump and his shadow president Musk have proven they will shutter any Agency that stands in their way.
Today, we are left wondering who will speak up to protect the health of millions of Americans? Unfortunately, Mr. Kennedy has already shown he is not up to the task.
So, colleagues, I urge you to join me in fighting to protect the health of our constituents and oppose the confirmation of Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. President, I join my last two colleagues, the Senator from New Hampshire and the Senator from California, in echoing some of their concerns, because I also rise today to oppose President Trump's nomination of Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr., to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
It has been less than a month since Donald Trump was inaugurated. It feels a bit longer for some of us. Yet already, we have seen this administration attack nonpartisan civil servants, illegally freeze Federal funding, and gut the independent oversight bodies that crack down and protect Americans from corruption.
That would mean, now more than ever, the Senate needs to confirm nominees who want to make the government more efficient, yes, but who are also willing to work in good faith to advance their missions, regardless of political ideology.
Unfortunately, I don't believe that Mr. Kennedy is that nominee, and I fear that he will serve as a rubberstamp to the chaos and disruption that the Trump-Musk administration brings.
The past couple of weeks have made it clear that Elon Musk and his DOGE bros have a disturbing scheme to undermine the government's ability to operate, all in the name of efficiency.
We have seen Musk take a hatchet to USAID, ceding soft power and, frankly, 70 years of bipartisan leadership in that domain, to China.
We have seen that same attack to limit our ability to fight terrorists and, unfortunately, turn our back--which we have never done, even with Presidents of Democrat or Republican affiliation--turn our back entirely on the international community.
We have seen Mr. Musk take a hatchet to the CFPB and leave consumers to fend for themselves, giving a pass to
We are starting to see Musk take aim at the Department of Education.
We cannot allow this pattern to continue at the Agency tasked with keeping people healthy and safe.
As folks in my State may remember, earlier this month, the President issued an illegal order to freeze all Federal spending. Fortunately, the funding freeze order was rescinded after a major public outcry and the threat of losing in court. Yet, even with the order rescinded, real people's lives were fundamentally changed.
Across Virginia, for example, three community health centers had to close during the funding freeze, and now they won't be reopening because of uncertainty. They are not sure the money is even coming back.
These health centers, which provide primary and preventive care for the underserved populations, feel they can no longer rely on the government contract or the government to keep its word or meet its obligations.
In rural Buckingham County, a health center is having to put off replacing the only machine in the county that provides breast cancer screening.
Who suffers? Well, it is not Mr. Musk. He is the richest man in the world. I imagine he and the young men who work with him get pretty good and timely care.
But if we would just end it there, that wouldn't be all that we would potentially be putting Mr. Kennedy into. We have already seen some of the foreshadowing of what is to come if Mr. Kennedy is confirmed as the HHS nominee.
Take the NIH for example--National Institutes of Health--something broadly supported in a bipartisan way. NIH is one of the many important Agencies that is tasked with advancing medical and public health research in the United States. And, literally, in the years that I have been here, it has been Republican Members who have often taken the lead in championing existing and increasing funding. Unfortunately, many of the medical achievements which started off as NIH grants, from cancer immunotherapies to heart valve replacements to medications for many health conditions, all started at NIH. Yet earlier this week, the Trump administration put forward a plan to cut $4 billion in Federal funding for research at hospital and universities, like those in Virginia which conduct some of our Nation's top research. This basically cuts the legs out of a lot of NIH funding.
This illegal and shortsighted maneuver could decrease the kind of work that leads to medical cures and scientific breakthroughs. It could devastate a major research ecosystem in Virginia, eliminate 21st century jobs, and hurt countless American families who have been touched by cancer and other devastating diseases.
I have no earthly idea why the President would choose to cede American R&D leadership in bio at this moment to China. But what I do know is that Mr. Kennedy will do nothing to stop it.
What we need at HHS is a nominee who is willing to go in with a scalpel, not a hatchet, to make our healthcare system better. We need someone with the preparedness and experience necessary to safeguard a woman's right to reproductive care; to support healthcare systems in their fight against cyber attacks; that would protect both Medicare and Medicaid, and ensure that American families can count on good health insurance.
Rather than focusing on any of these things, Mr. Kennedy, as you have heard from my colleagues, has expressed that he would like to gut our Nation's top health Agency. Specifically, he said he would like to oust 2,200 nonpartisan health experts at HHS.
At his hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, I asked him a very simple question: Which ones? Which of these nonpartisan health officials have you got slated for the chopping block? I wondered, was it the folks who keep our food safe from salmonella? The individuals who examine medications we give our kids? He couldn't even answer the question who he wanted to cut.
Now, I do appreciate Mr. Kennedy's concern with chronic illnesses and the obesity epidemic. I also agree that not enough Americans have access to healthy food. However, having met with Mr. Kennedy in private and having questioned him in the hearing, I don't believe he is the right person to tackle these complicated issues.
I don't have the confidence that he will be willing to consider the science or consult nonpartisan health experts when necessary. I certainly don't have the confidence that he would ever be willing to stand up to Donald Trump or Elon Musk.
Frankly, at least in Virginia, I am not the only one who feels that way. Let me take a moment to share some concerns I have heard from Virginians.
Katherine, an ICU nurse in Charlottesville wrote:
Take Talia, an Alexandria resident who suffers chronic illnesses. She wrote:
She fears, if nominated, Mr. Kennedy will cut progress in science and medical research.
Another constituent from Nokesville wrote:
A doctor from my hometown of Alexandria wrote:
A cancer survivor from Virginia Beach wrote:
The writing is on the wall. This nominee does not have the right experience, credibility, or motivations to be running a government Agency of this size and importance. That is why I will be voting no on Mr. Kennedy's nomination to be Secretary and urge my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. President, in Oklahoma, if you were to go to any house anywhere in the State right now and ask them how their money should be spent, they would probably smile at you and say: I would like to decide that, not somebody else.
That would be a pretty common conversation, I would bet, in most every State.
For a lot of folks in my State that make $55,000, $60,000--make enough to be able to get by, work hard, take care of their kids and their family--it is a challenge for them from day to day, so every single dollar counts to them. They think about how every single dollar is spent or saved.
That is why it is surprising, in all the dialogue right now about government waste--there is a big dialogue about how do we handle waste and how do we cut back and how fast should we cut back and what should that look like.
But Oklahomans that I talk to are not offended that we are actually cutting back on waste. Now, they may have questions about how it is done and the speed and where it comes out. Those are all reasonable questions we should have a national dialogue on. But when Oklahomans hear that USAID last year did a grant of $32,000 to create a comic book about transgenders in Peru, they would say to me: Hey, I would like to be able to spend that $32,000 myself rather than the transgender comic book in Peru. If the folks in Peru want that comic book, maybe they should pay for it, not American taxpayers.
The folks in Oklahoma, if I were able to talk to them about the same issue,
Now, if I were to talk to Oklahomans, they would tell me they want to be able to be more in charge of that money, not sending it to do that.
They would do the same thing when they find out that $10 million in food aid that was supposed to be going to Syrian refugees was actually diverted to a terrorist group linked with al-Qaida, and they would want to ask USAID why that was done.
They would ask some basic questions: why almost $1 million was sent to a group linked to Hamas just the week before the October 7 attack was actually done.
All those things are reasonable conversations to have that are really, honestly, not partisan conversations in this room. I don't find anyone that thinks that is a partisan issue. Everybody just says: How do we go after that waste, and what do we do to be able to stop it?
For the last 10 years, I have stood in this room and I have talked about my ``Federal Fumbles'' book. We just released the latest version of my ``Federal Fumbles'' book today. The ``Federal Fumbles'' book that we put out each year is not trying to be overly critical of government. We have released it under Republican and Democrat Presidencies and Congresses. We have said: Why don't we spend time--quite frankly, as I ask every year--why doesn't every single Member of this body assign their staff to go look for areas of waste and regulatory inefficiency and just ask some very basic questions: How could we do this better?
Every business asks that question all the time. They ask the question: How can we be more efficient? How can we do things better?
But we in government ask more ``What can we do next?'' and very seldom stop to evaluate what has already been done. That is all ``Federal Fumbles'' is saying: This is the money that was allocated. How was it actually spent?
Over the years, we have engaged in things to be able to identify some areas of waste and to be able to put a stop to them. We stopped the funding that was going toward drag shows in Ecuador that we used to fund in American tax dollars. That is not happening anymore. We stopped the funding that was being sent to France to help preserve the secret language of French Parisian butchers. We used to fund that. We don't anymore. We stopped the funding that was going to research the Russian wine industry after we exposed that. We even stopped the funding that was going to the border to be able to fund Shakespeare all along our border. There might be other ways to be able to spend our money better at the border other than doing performances of Shakespeare with Federal tax dollars.
This year, we are spending some time actually focusing in on what can we do better; what has already been done that the money has gone out the door or how can we do things better. One of them, interestingly enough, has been one of the areas that are being talked a lot about more that we have already focused on, and that is FEMA and disaster relief. Now it has suddenly become a big topic of conversation over the last couple weeks. But we ask a very simple question: When a community experiences a hurricane, a tornado, a flood, and they want to engage with the Federal Government for disaster relief, this is what they confront: 30 different Agencies, 30 different processes for aid coming to their community, most of them having a different way to actually sign up for them, different deadlines, different information that is needed, and also different percentages. Some of them pay 90-10. Some of them pay 85-15. Some of them pay 50-50. They have to know this intricate set of rules in the middle of cleaning up from their disaster to be able to get relief.
This is a disaster, and it shouldn't be a partisan issue for us to be able to look at it and to say: We can do better. When a small, rural community faces a devastating flood, why are we asking the mayor of that community to figure this out to be able to get aid? They won't be able to. They are trying to help their neighbors dig out. We can do better on this.
So we exposed the 30 different Agencies and the spaghetti map of how to be able to get aid and to say: Let's work on this. We exposed some of the inefficiencies that are out in our Federal Government right now, even for things like permitting.
We all talk about energy production, and I know we have differences of opinion on where that energy should come from, but when we start talking about the permitting to go get energy--whether that is lithium or whether that is natural gas--we get into a conversation about how do you permit to actually go get that resource.
Well, right now in the United States of America, it is taking 29 years to go from the beginning process where a critical mineral is mined to actual production. We are on the same international ranking for efficiency of regulations on mining as Zambia.
If we go into our northern border, to Canada--now currently, apparently, referred to as the 51st State--if you go into Canada, it takes 3 years for them to be able to permit a mine. And they go through all their environmental reviews. They go through their legal challenges. They do all those things in 3 years, what is taking us 29 in current structure, if it ever gets done at all. We can do better on that.
If we want to increase our use of American-made minerals and our American-made production on that, we as the Federal Government, we as the U.S. Senate, have to be able to reform the way we are doing our permitting processes so that we can produce that American energy.
If we have some belief that China or Central Africa or the Middle East is producing energy cleaner than we are, we are kidding ourselves. We will produce it cleaner if we can get to it at all.
In this ``Federal Fumbles'' book, we walk through a lot of areas of waste we have identified and said: Hey, let's find some common areas of agreement that we should all be able to look at.
Let me raise one that is controversial: the SNAP program. I don't know a person in this room that would say they want to end the SNAP program. That is food stamps, for some people that still use the old term. But over $10 billion was actually allocated in the SNAP program last year of what they called improper payments; that is, we don't know if they qualified or not for the program.
Now, a lot of folks in Oklahoma would say: I don't mind people getting some help when they need it, but for folks that don't qualify, why are they actually getting access to that?
We have the same issue in the Medicare and Medicaid Program. We don't want to do anything to be able to hurt that program. We have a lot of things we need to do better in that program to deliver. But over $100 billion in Medicare and Medicaid last year was designated as improper payments; that is, we don't know if it is an appropriate payment that was done or not.
That is something we should spend some time investigating. Mr. President, $100 billion seems like real money to me.
Last year, there was a billion dollars that was allocated in subsidies to a Chinese solar manufacturing facility--a billion in American taxpayer subsidies.
If I went to the folks in Oklahoma and said, ``Where should we get solar power?'' Not a one of them would say China. And if they did, they certainly wouldn't say: We should give a billion dollars to a Chinese company to be able to subsidize them to be able to send solar panels to us.
If I were to walk around Washington, DC, right now, current stats are there are 17 Agencies in Washington, DC, that are using 25 percent or less of their real estate. Seventeen of our Agencies are using 25 percent or less of their occupancy building space. That is billions of dollars in costs in electricity; that is billions of dollars in costs in furniture--for a simple question, because it is not a business. They are not having to pursue efficiency. We have 75 percent of the building unused.
Listen, these aren't partisan things. If I sat down with my Democratic colleagues, they would nod their head and say: Let's take a look at that. Let's figure it out. The most simple thing that we do every year when we bring out this ``Federal Fumbles'' book is say: Here are things we can talk about.
Now, I understand the DOGE conversation has become controversial with Elon Musk and some of the tactics and the speed that they are moving. I completely understand that and respect the conversations about that. But government inefficiency shouldn't be partisan. It shouldn't be controversial.
And for those that have joined all of us that have worked on this for years to expose waste in government, welcome to the club. We are glad to have folks engaging on this. I am not critical. I am excited that you are here because we need more help, because when the Federal Government fumbles taxpayer dollars, people in Oklahoma, in my State, lose their hard-earned tax money on things that aren't education, aren't roads, aren't national defense. They are waste, and that is what people want to see stopped.
So I not only encourage people to be able to just take a glance--it is easy reading, lots of pictures. I not only encourage people to take a glance at our ``Federal Fumbles'' book, now that it is released, but I encourage every Member of this body to assign their staff to go look for waste. And then let's sit down together and see if we can figure out how to make it stop. We should waste less and save more. It shouldn't be that hard.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, I rise today in strong opposition to President Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The Department he has been picked to lead is charged with protecting the health of all Americans, from safeguarding Medicare and nursing home care for seniors to investing in medical research, to safeguarding the Nation's food supply and supporting public health programs such as lead poisoning prevention and suicide prevention.
One of the most important public health inventions of the last century is vaccines, making many deadly and debilitating diseases a thing of the past. The Secretary of Health and Human Services has an outsized role in making vaccines available to children and adults throughout the country, and that is something that gives me great pause about Mr. Kennedy's nomination.
For those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, polio was an insidious threat that sent fear literally through every home in this country until Dr. Salk invented a vaccine. And it literally saved the lives--many, many lives--of generations of Americans. It was approved, and then it went forward. But I can recall lining up--in fact, my parents pulling me along and urging me to stand in line to get the first shot, and then the following year, get the next shot, because to them it was not just a medical routine. It could eliminate the constant worry and concern that one day their child could be subject to polio. So this notion of vaccine that is prompted by Mr. Kennedy is, I think, contrary to the great experience, at least, of those who have been through that period of time.
Mr. Kennedy has spent the last decade or more spreading lies about vaccines and encouraging families not to vaccinate their children. He is not just an advocate with a loud bullhorn spreading that message. Indeed, Mr. Kennedy has made a living making millions of dollars, no less, questioning the safety of vaccines--safety that has been proven time and time again.
Mr. Kennedy chaired one of the most prominent anti-vaccine organizations, the Children's Health Defense, for almost a decade, stepping aside only to run for President in 2023.
Mr. Kennedy had a long and successful career as an environmental lawyer, and he has a compelling personal history overcoming addiction and should be commended for that. However, Mr. Kennedy's only work in the health space has been deeply detrimental to the public health of the United States and, indeed, across the globe. There is no starker example of this than his work in Samoa 5 years ago.
In 2018, in a tragic mistake, two infants in Samoa died after receiving their measles vaccine. The vaccines had been improperly prepared--improperly prepared--with a muscle relaxer instead of water. To be clear, nothing about the vaccine itself killed these children. Indeed, two nurses were imprisoned for 5 years for the mistake they made that day.
Children's Health Defense, again, chaired by Mr. Kennedy, seized on the opportunity and began questioning the safety of the measles vaccine online. Between the tragic accident and the spread of misinformation, the vaccine rate in Samoa fell to dangerously low levels.
Children's Health Defense pressed on, paying for Mr. Kennedy to travel to Samoa, with a prominent anti-vaccine activist, to meet with the Prime Minister and other government officials, as well as other anti-vaccine activists.
And the damage was done. A measles outbreak began a few months later and, with such low vaccination rates, spread rapidly. By January 2020, there were almost 6,000 cases of measles, which resulted in the death of 83 people, and nearly all of the deaths were in children under the age 5.
Two truly tragic deaths spiraled into over 80 deaths, mostly of young children. And really think about that: children dying of a vaccine- preventable illness, with a vaccine widely available. And Mr. Kennedy was one of the leading voices opposing vaccination, encouraging places like Samoa to embrace a natural experience to see what happens when we stop routine vaccinations.
We have seen what happens. Children die.
And on top of that, Mr. Kennedy not only maintains no wrongdoing; he takes no responsibility. He denies the reality of what happened. In his confirmation hearing, he claimed that the cause of these children's death wasn't clear. Nothing could be further from the truth. We know exactly what happened, and Mr. Kennedy is still peddling misinformation to the U.S. Senate and to the people of America.
Now, I mentioned that Mr. Kennedy stepped down from Children's Health Defense in 2023 to run for President, which leads me to my next concern. It has been reported that Mr. Kennedy, in fact, approached both the Trump and Harris campaigns offering his support if he could take on a prominent role in the winning campaign's administration.
Then-Candidate Donald Trump took him up on his offer. In short order, Mr. Kennedy abandoned his campaign, endorsed President Trump, and, it appears, agreed to do whatever President Trump would demand of him in the new role as Secretary of HHS.
The American people, I do not believe, can trust Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy has proven, time and time again, that he will bow to President Trump and his reckless agenda.
For example, Mr. Kennedy has a long, lifetime record of being pro- choice. Yet he said at his confirmation hearing that he will do whatever President Trump wants on issues of reproductive health, perhaps taking away lifesaving care for women.
During his confirmation hearings, Mr. Kennedy downplayed the work that he had done discrediting vaccines, no doubt to secure the votes he needed to get confirmed in this role. When asked about his affiliation with Children's Health Defense, which, again, promotes anti-vaccine views widely and he chaired for almost a decade, he acted like he had barely heard of it.
When asked about his previous statement sowing doubts about vaccines, he claimed it was taken out of context or misrepresented. Yet these anti-vaccine statements are not things he has said once or twice; they are deeply held views that he has spent a lifetime pushing.
In 2015, for example, Mr. Kennedy falsely associated autism with vaccines, saying:
He did later apologize for equating autism with the Holocaust, but he has
Well, ask scientists, not Robert Kennedy.
However, this wasn't the first time he had made references to such despicable examples as Nazi Germany when talking about childhood immunizations.
When speaking at a conference in 2013 about his claim that vaccines cause autism--a claim that has been debunked decades before and many times since, he stated:
When asked why the CDC would cover up the supposed link between vaccines and autism, Mr. Kennedy said:
This is not the language of a thoughtful, insightful person dealing with a subject so critical to our country as vaccines. This is inflammatory, outrageous, and I think consistent with his behavior, unfortunately.
Now, Mr. Kennedy has also said that vaccine scientists should be imprisoned for their work. At the same conference he said of vaccine researchers:
In 2021, speaking on a podcast about how he encourages people not to vaccinate their children, he said:
In case it wasn't clear, he repeated his position later in the same podcast saying:
In the summer of 2023, speaking on a podcast, he was asked if there was any vaccine he thought was good, and he responded:
That says it all. He has a long, long record of opposing vaccines and discouraging families from getting vaccinated.
But now that Mr. Kennedy is facing a nomination vote in the Senate, he changes his tune. Mr. Kennedy said in his own confirmation hearing that he did not oppose vaccines and had, in fact, gotten all of his kids vaccinated.
That is a hard pill to swallow for the families in Samoa whose children died after Mr. Kennedy and his organization convinced them not to vaccinate their children.
If confirmed to this role, I don't know which Robert Kennedy we will get: the pro-choice, environmental lawyer with a penchant for conspiracy theories and pushing anti-vaccine propaganda or a mouthpiece for President Trump, pushing an anti-choice agenda, putting women's lives at risk, advocating for an end to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and allowing Elon Musk and DOGE to undermine HHS at every turn.
Either outcome is dangerous to the American people and their health, and I will oppose the nomination.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mr. President, I rise to share my deep concerns about entrusting our Nation's ability to respond to another pandemic, our world leading medical innovation infrastructure, the ability of women in my State to choose a medical abortion, and continued research for healthcare of millions of Americans, putting that in the hands of the HHS Secretary nominee, Robert F. Kennedy.
We all agree that our healthcare system could be reformed. It can be bloated; it can be maddening. Too many people have gotten the dreaded letter from an insurance company telling them: ``Sorry, your procedure isn't covered.'' And if you don't have insurance, you avoid that doctor visit, and you pay out of pocket, or maybe you wait until you end up in the emergency room and have to deal with medical debt. And we all know the cost of prescription drugs are too high.
We agree that we are spending way too much and that we need better outcomes. So you only have to look at the health outcomes of virtually every other industrialized nation to know that they spend less and get better results. But rather than choose a new leader for the Health and Human Services Agency that would lead us down that better path, President Trump's nominee would get us stuck in conspiracy theories that would cost us lives.
The nominee has been a purveyor of disinformation. As my colleague from Rhode Island just mentioned, sowing doubt about lifesaving vaccines, he said, ``[ . . . ] the COVID 19 was a bio-weapon that spared Jews and the Chinese [ . . . ].''
Achieving better health outcomes, both today and in the future, happens when we follow science--not conspiracy theories, but science. I happen to represent a very innovative science State, and right now, it is a choice about innovation versus the skepticism represented by this nominee.
Instead of speeding up innovation, under Mr. Kennedy, we would be taking a risky step backwards. The COVID pandemic showed us, in my State, one of the first--actually, the first in the Nation known cases of a COVID-19 case.
And 5 years ago this month, some of the first deaths occurred in my State. Sadly, there were many more. And trust me, I came back here to Washington, DC, and people talked as if business was usual, all the while it was spreading across my State.
Ultimately, this pandemic killed more than 1.2 million people, and it devastated our economy, it had an impact on our children's education, and it has long term healthcare effects on millions of survivors.
Now, we are at the possibility of the beginning of another crisis, the avian flu. This crisis is yet another reminder of the importance of medical research and collaboration. But these two stories were on the front page of the Seattle Times just yesterday, the cost of eggs skyrocketing, caused by the avian flu, and the proposed cuts to NIH.
Now, what do people not understand? Does it make sense to cut science at the time we might have another pandemic? Does it make sense to continue to cut the collaborative efforts of research? This Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Washington State University is on the frontlines of the avian flu.
One of my institutions is on the frontline. They test animals from across the State so they can be identified and stop the flu from spreading. And we want to cut those dollars?
Americans already see the impact of the avian flu every time they go to the grocery store, and now, people in Seattle and Spokane are saying it costs $7 for a dozen eggs. Some stores are limiting how many eggs you can buy.
So, as you can see, this issue is on the top of mind of constituents, and they want to know what kind of leadership we are going to provide here in Washington, DC, to lower costs, particularly at the grocery store, but to also lower costs in healthcare. Putting someone in charge who is a skeptic of medical science in response to the avian flu is just wrong. It is a catastrophic mistake for America's healthcare.
Now, I will admit my State is a global leader in medical innovation. From research, to biotech, to getting drugs to the market--in 2023, the National Institutes of Health awarded $1.2 billion in highly competitive grants to 65 different organizations in the State of Washington.
This supported about 12,000 jobs and generated close to $3 billion in economic activity. So, yes, we know a little something about global health and innovation. But we know something else, Mr. President, the kind of research we are talking about here is the kind that saves lives, and this, ultimately, is about making an investment in saving the lives of people.
Last Friday, when the Trump administration announced it was reducing
For example, as I mentioned, Washington State University with avian flu, they actually help pay for backup generators. These generators keep the systems working in case of a power outage so the pathogens can't escape. So if you cut the institution and you cut the lab, who is going to pay for these overhead costs? Or will they have to cancel their research or stop training the PhD students?
So, this week, a court stepped in and blocked the NIH head count cuts for now, but believe me, people are afraid that their life's work will be gone.
At the University of Washington Medicine, they are testing treatments for kidney disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and pediatric cancer. So, if the so-called DOGE cap goes into place, these are programs that will see a shortfall.
They tell me they have to stop admitting new patients to clinical trials, that they will have to scale back. And we can't just start and stop medical research like a faucet. Once these people leave, the programs are stopped. It takes a long time to get them started. Once halted, the research data, the clinical trial, the patients, the laboratory, the equipment that led to those innovations will be lost.
Now, if you ask me, that is throwing taxpayer dollars away. When you have an opportunity to cure a disease that affects millions of people and can save taxpayers billions, but somebody is arbitrarily going to cut these NIH funds, thinking they are saving the American people? They are not saving them. They are causing harm.
Cutting NIH and scientific research funding have consequences for every State in this Union. North Carolina is home of the famous research triangle and receives about $2.2 billion in NIH funding. Texas is home of Baylor College of Medicine and receives about $1.85 billion in NIH funding.
As a country, we should be working together to do more research, create more jobs, and decide what are the lifesaving science and medical innovations that we want to invest in and are represented in a budget process here in the U.S. Senate--not the arbitrary decisions of someone who hasn't even been elected to make these decisions.
But the risks don't stop at our medical labs. Republicans are proposing to cut $2.3 trillion in Federal Medicaid funding so the administration can afford to lower taxes on some of the most extreme wealthy Americans.
More than 1.8 million Washingtonians are enrolled in Apple Health, Washington's Medicaid program. So that is one in six adults, two in five children, three in five nursing home residents, three in eight people with disabilities. I am not confident, Mr. President, that Mr. Kennedy understands how critical this process is and the provisions of Medicaid are to people in my State.
We know that we had this debate before and only because a very small bipartisan group of Senators helped save Medicaid from a crazy block grant idea that would have taken a very big building block out of our healthcare delivery system. Thanks to all my colleagues on this side and those on that side who stood up for that and said block granting was the wrong idea.
Well, believe me, they are at it again. There are those who think to give the tax break to corporations, somehow you are going to get it out of the hide of these very individuals that are counting on Medicaid.
I do not believe Mr. Kennedy will stand up to President Trump and be an advocate for those who rely on Medicaid. I know my constituents know what is at stake with this vote, and they know that our healthcare delivery system is about science, it is about innovation, it is about making the investments to keep Americans healthy. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this nomination.
Mr. President, the greatest threat to American prosperity is not food aid to kids in Sudan or a diverse workforce; the greatest threat to our country is the abuse of power by a small group of people--an unelected group of people--who happen to have a billion dollars.
Our Founding Fathers created a government with checks and balances, but they didn't anticipate a U.S. Congress--now currently under Republican control--that would voluntarily give away its constitutional authority. That is where we find ourselves, as hospitals and medical researchers in blue and red States are in chaos over the Trump administration's attempt to usurp Congress's power of the purse.
When Senate Republicans abandon another constitutional responsibility of advice and consent for Cabinet officials, we are presented with such things as the bizarre nomination of Robert Kennedy, Jr., to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
It has been my honor to know members of the Kennedy family and particularly to serve with one of them, Teddy Kennedy. He used to sit right back there. He was an amazing man. He probably had more impact on the legislative agenda and the outcome of legislation than anybody I witnessed in the time I have been in the Senate. I counted him as a friend, and I still mourn his loss. But today we are considering a Kennedy that I don't believe is qualified to follow in his uncle's footsteps.
Health and Human Services is a life-and-death Department of government. Every day, Federal health officials decide whether to approve new medications after they have been proven--clinically tested and proven to be safe and effective. We count on the HHS to initiate recalls of contaminated food. We count on that same Agency to investigate new therapies for cancer clinical trials. We count on HHS to alert doctors about an emergency disease outbreak. Think about the gravity of those situations and how much is vested in the Secretary of that critical Department.
In any of these tasks--critical, often historic tasks--Robert Kennedy, Jr., would find himself unqualified, unfit, and dangerous to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Mr. Kennedy masquerades as a crusader for healthy foods and someone who just wants to--``I just want to ask some questions. I just want to study the science.''
America, the Senate, don't be fooled.
Mr. Kennedy has spent the past 30 years ignoring science and lying to parents about vaccines, all the while enriching himself by the doubt he has created.
He declared:
Can you imagine that for a moment, that he would walk up to a person he didn't know and counsel them: Don't vaccinate your child.
Look at this quote. Does this sound like the kind of person you want to lead the premier health Agency of our Federal Government?
He states:
No vaccine safe and effective. And he wants to head the Health and Human Services Department?
The organization he founded sells newborn onesies that have printed on them ``Unvaccinated, Unafraid.'' Another one says ``No Vax, No Problem.'' To him, it is a novelty, a game that he can say these things about vaccines that literally have been proven over and over and over again to be safe and save lives.
During his confirmation hearing, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a Senator, of course, and a medical doctor who has the distinguished record of service to poor people in his State, practically begged Robert Kennedy, Jr., to state unequivocally that the hepatitis B and measles vaccines do not cause autism. Kennedy couldn't bring himself to do it.
When confronted during his hearings with false statements he has made linking vaccines to autism, he feigned ignorance to decades of research findings and suggested he just needed to be shown the data. Well, that data has been around for decades.
Mr. Kennedy approaches this job with bias--a deadly, dangerous bias-- and he is unwilling to consider information that contradicts his preconceived conspiracies.
If Mr. Kennedy is confirmed, he won't be just speaking to one parent on a
Since 1974, the measles vaccine has saved 94 million lives, and since its creation, the smallpox vaccine has saved 200 million lives--2 proven, successful vaccines, and we have to sell them to a man who wants to head the HHS and says that there is no vaccine that is safe and effective?
Measles is one of the most contagious pathogens on Earth. When I was a kid in the fifties going to school, it was common for kids to get measles. I had them. I stayed home from school a few days and usually got through it all after waiting at home for all those red spots to go away. Yet, with Mr. Kennedy's megaphone online, we are seeing the danger of conspiracy theories.
Last year, a record share of kindergartners across America had nonmedical exemption from vaccines. Right now, there is a measles outbreak tearing through Gaines County, TX. Seven kids are hospitalized--all unvaccinated. Gaines County has one of the highest rates in Texas of school-age children opting out of vaccines. Why are parents in that county in Texas and a few other counties forgoing lifesaving vaccines? Because of fraudsters like Mr. Kennedy.
What about polio? I know that issue personally. I see Senator King on the floor. He remembers it as well. Since 1955, the polio vaccine has prevented 20 million people from becoming paralyzed and saved 1\1/2\ million lives. Most Americans are lucky never to have ever experienced the fear of polio. I remember, as a kid, it scared the hell out of us. A kid could go to school healthy and be paralyzed at dinnertime.
A constituent of mine, Mary Ellen from Union County, wrote to me. Mary Ellen said:
I remember that era--iron lungs, leg braces, paralysis, and worse.
Had Mr. Kennedy been our Nation's Health Secretary at that time, would American families have access today to lifesaving measles and polio vaccines? I am afraid the answer is clearly no. This isn't speculation; look at the record.
Mr. Kennedy and his associates have filed petitions with the Food and Drug Administration to remove the COVID, hepatitis B, and polio vaccines from the market.
In 2019, Mr. Kennedy flew to Samoa during a measles outbreak to question whether the vaccines themselves were causing the illness. As a result of that, 83 people died in Samoa.
When asked by Senator Warren, Mr. Kennedy said he would not do anything differently about that dangerous trip. Eighty-three people died as he spread those falsehoods about the vaccine.
Senator Cassidy aptly wondered:
Mr. President, I am sorry, but we know the answer.
Listen, I understand we have a great health system in this country, but I also understand it is flawed in many ways. I spent years in my Senate and House career to lower drug prices, rein in Big Pharma's influence, and stop Big Tobacco from peddling poison to our kids. But just because he might talk about the right problems doesn't mean Mr. Kennedy has the right solutions. In fact, over 2 days of hearings, he did not offer a single concrete idea on how to improve the delivery of primary care or preventive healthcare services.
It was clear Mr. Kennedy didn't understand the difference between Medicaid and Medicare. Mr. President, I will tell you, that is an issue that you take up in Congress 101.
Nobody believes Kennedy will stand up to President Trump or Elon Musk on medical research.
I understand the urge to shake things up, to address failures in our healthcare system, but Mr. Kennedy brings an unacceptable prejudice that will only cause harm and be dangerous to American families.
Neil Steinberg writes for the Chicago Sun-Times. He wrote that when you are claiming you want to ``study'' the issue where the science is settled, that is code for dismissing facts that don't serve your personal bias.
I fear there is a sense that being an outsider is qualification enough, but how far could Senate Republicans be willing to go if they pursue that dangerous path? Make no mistake, if the political tables were turned and it were Democrats proposing this man for this job, he wouldn't get a single Republican vote in the Senate. He would be decried as a pro-choice, anti-vax, uninformed, conspiracy theorist who trades on his family name to peddle dangerous misinformation that benefits him financially. And guess what. This nominee is all of those things. But because he was nominated by President Trump and has the MAGA seal of approval, my Republican colleagues can't wait to march down and support his nomination.
Many of them secretly, privately, quietly know better. Some of them are doctors or parents themselves who trusted doctors to vaccinate their kids or people who spent their lives trying to really improve our health system. They know Mr. Kennedy is not the right choice for the job, and they know our children will suffer the most if he becomes HHS Secretary. I hope they will find the courage to join me and reject his nomination.
Let me add this point that is related to this issue, and I will make it brief. On Friday, the Trump administration issued an illegal order to impose an arbitrary cap of 15 percent on ``indirect costs'' that the NIH pays to grantees for essential research expenses.
Without this funding for specialized equipment, data processing, safety materials, and the maintenance of labs, universities and hospitals nationwide will not be able to afford the technology that allows them to continue lifesaving research.
This is a critical moment in America's history. After the progress that we have made, after the leadership we have shown, are we going to, under this new President, turn our backs on medical research? God forbid. If you go through the misfortune of a terrible diagnosis for yourself or someone you love, you pray that you can then ask the doctor: Is there anything--a new medicine, a new cure, a new surgical procedure? And you are hoping that medical researchers lead that answer to yes that one moment in your life.
In 2017--the last time President Trump attempted to cut NIH funding-- the now-House Appropriations Committee chair, Tom Cole of Oklahoma, called the proposal ``arbitrary, unreasonable, and ultimately destructive of the research enterprise.'' Chairman Cole understood that cutting funding means clinical trials will be delayed, new breakthroughs in cures will be put off, and promising researchers will get discouraged and leave the field.
A constituent and doctor from Palos Heights, IL, wrote to me:
This sudden, indiscriminate cut to medical research violates Federal law, which blocks NIH from deviating from its current indirect cost policy.
Thankfully, my attorney general in Illinois, Kwame Raoul, and 21 other States filed a Federal lawsuit to temporarily halt this senseless cut.
Remember, tweets from Elon Musk forced a bipartisan pediatric cancer research bill to be cut from a government spending bill just a few weeks ago. Now Mr. Musk is at it again; only this time, he is targeting cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes. If Elon Musk were to get sick, I will bet the richest man in the world would find the doctor he wanted. I am sure he would. For the rest of us, for the parents facing a devastating diagnosis of someone we love, this is a cruel political decision.
A University of Chicago researcher put it this way:
Mr. President, I don't know that this will continue to be a problem and challenge, but I promise you this: As long as I have the power to stand and speak out in favor of the National Institutes of Health, I am going to do it.
This country is a great country. It has greatness that includes medical research--maybe the best in the world.
I will be voting to oppose Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and doing everything in my power to restore the spending for medical research in America.
Mr. President, I appreciate what the good Senator from Illinois has gone through and enunciated in great clarity.
Our government plays a critical role in informing the public. The American people look to us for trust. They look to us for guidance during the roughest points of our history. They look to us for accurate, factual information so they can have the freedom to raise their families without fear and anxiety.
That trust is broken when partisan officials use their platforms to spread reckless and damaging information. They attempt to overwhelm Americans with views that push anti-science narratives or foreign propaganda often that threatens our national security.
You can't go onto social media anymore without running into a fake headline or some hyperbolic clamor with no source. I mean, for so many people, the more you see, the more you believe, and this leaves Americans dazed and confused, unsure of who to trust and where they can go to get accurate information.
Unfortunately, the new administration has shown a bias towards elevating people who peddle disinformation, spreading seemingly random falsehoods about our voting systems, marginalized groups, or our public health. This has real negative impacts on Americans.
Way back in 1980, I graduated with a master's in Earth sciences. I moved west to work as a geologist. Earth sciences is kind of low on the Pavlov pyramid of science, but I published peer-reviewed studies, and I have a reverence for the scientific process. I think I understand how it works, despite the fact that there are not that many of us left around here anymore. I will be the first to admit that science can sometimes surprise us. It is always evolving. It is why the entire field of science relies on constant evaluation and constant research to continue to make new discoveries or deepen our understanding of complex problems.
Leading with science helps us get the most accurate information we can. Yet the Trump administration's appetite for anti-scientific claims and disinformation is something that, in many ways, threatens all of us. It puts our country at risk.
This morning, the Senate confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence. I voted no on her confirmation. Ms. Gabbard has none of the relevant qualifications or intelligence experience sufficient for this role. Officials from both sides of the aisle have raised concerns about her ability to provide the President with impartial analysis as the Nation's top intelligence officer.
Ms. Gabbard has frequently parroted Russian disinformation. She repeated Russia's erroneous justification for its brutal invasion of Ukraine. She criticized Kyiv's democratic government--a steadfast partner of the United States--and she spread, repeatedly, falsehoods about her own involvement in bioweapons research in Ukraine.
Let's be clear about what this means: An American adversary invades another democracy, and Ms. Gabbard actively pushes their narrative. Either she cannot distinguish fact from fiction or she intentionally chooses to promote false claims. Either scenario should be disqualifying for a Cabinet official, let alone one who is responsible for ensuring the President has accurate and timely intelligence.
As they say, ``He who stands for nothing will fall for anything.''
Regardless of her intentions or what she actually believes, her readiness to champion clear disinformation undermines our national security and puts American servicemembers at risk.
As the Director of National Intelligence, Ms. Gabbard will have full visibility into every threat that the military and civilian personnel who perform these vital missions in Colorado and across the country and around the world are working tirelessly to address. They need leaders-- we need leaders--who base every assessment and decision on accurate intelligence, not propaganda, especially not propaganda from one of the most threatening rivals we have.
President Trump's nominee to the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is another clear example of someone who is willing to overlook facts and science when it is convenient. He has a wide following, and many people look to him for guidance and for leadership. In particular, his ideas of a healthier America appeal to many Coloradans. Indeed, they appeal to me as well.
But make no mistake: Our country can and should be healthier, and we all share a vested effort in that direction. There is a bipartisan appetite to get us there. We should provide better food options and keep unsafe chemicals out of the products that we eat, but we have to be able to do it in tandem with fact-based science and thoughtful policy to protect Americans and to keep them safe.
RFK, Jr., has shown a propensity for anti-science claims. One of his most anti-scientific claims is that autism is caused by childhood vaccines. This is a claim that has been spread through many communities for decades. It is all based on a single paper published back in 1998. That paper was retracted years ago, and there have been hundreds of studies on the nonexistent link between autism and the measles vaccine ever since. They have all--I repeat--they have all had a zero connection between vaccines and the cause of autism. Let me be clear: Every single one found a zero connection. It is settled science.
Vaccines are not only extremely safe; they are extremely effective. Every year, they save millions of lives all around the globe. We have effectively eliminated horrible diseases like polio, and we are making considerable progress toward a vaccine for HIV and for AIDS. In the last hundred years, our country's average life expectancy has increased by 30 years, and 25 of those 30 years are largely attributed to vaccine adoption and clean drinking water. Vaccines not only save lives, but they also make lives healthier and happier, which is as they were intended.
Now, some of the damage from disinformation about vaccines is nearly impossible to undo. Why would anyone accept the results of one debunked paper rather than the conclusions of hundreds of studies that have been conducted since?
It is completely understandable for parents to have questions and concerns about vaccines that their children receive. I know I have as a parent. As a parent of two kids--one who just turned 2 years old--I understand the concern that families feel. We want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to keep our kids healthy and safe. We do the best we can with what we have to make them as healthy and happy as possible. People who peddle vaccine skepticism are preying upon parents' very rational fears to advance these conspiracy theories. Parents are trying their hardest to keep their kids safe and healthy, and it is irresponsible for people to plague them with pseudoscience and misinformation when the science has been settled on this for decades. The measles vaccine is safe and does not cause autism.
It is personal for me, too. My son Teddy--now in college-- unfortunately, got pertussis, or whooping cough, when he was 4 months old--before he was able to finish his full vaccination schedule--after he interacted with an unvaccinated child. Because of how rare whooping cough is now, it took us a while to get the correct diagnosis.
Finally, when we got him into Children's Hospital, I remember staying up all night for 2 nights in a row to blast little puffs of oxygen into his coughing face--to snap him out of those coughs--about every 10 minutes and to prevent his oxygen blood levels from dropping too low. It is one of the most frightening experiences of my entire life.
Whooping cough--that disease--is rare because of the vaccine and because of the adoption of that vaccine. America was able to almost completely stamp it out of existence. If we backslide in the number of children getting vaccinated, stories like what happened
When you consistently promote uncertainty in settled science, it begins to raise doubts about all science, and it slows our progress using science against the really big challenges, like a cure for cancer and vaccines for the next pandemic.
In President Trump's first full term--at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic--Operation Warp Speed helped bring vaccines to the public in record time. The National Institutes of Health estimate that Operation Warp Speed saved over 140,000 lives by speeding up the development of vaccines by more than 5 months. When the next pandemic comes along--it is not if; it is when--we are going to need a robust Federal response and preparedness plan. We need the ability to get to a vaccine down to 100 days. We need that plan to be guided by actual science. Otherwise, we obviously endanger the lives and health of all Americans.
The Department of Health and Human Services also oversees Federal medical research as Senator Durbin pointed out. The research has unlocked groundbreaking achievements in public health and will continue to help us cure diseases and work toward solutions for a variety of illnesses. However, the White House announced late last week that they are slashing funding for the National Institutes of Health.
This will have devastating impacts on research projects in Colorado and across the United States, including places in Colorado like CU- Anschutz, Fort Lewis College, and National Jewish Health. Our Colorado institutions are at the forefront of medical research from everything from clinical trials for veterans who are struggling with PTSD to individuals with Down syndrome. These cuts for research institutions, rural hospitals, and our veterans will impact our most vulnerable communities--all this to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.
Again, I am all for making government more efficient and smaller. If you want to seriously look at how we spend money and where we can cut actual fraud and waste and abuse, I am in. I am game. But I struggle to understand how stripping funding for cancer research or Head Start or hiring programs for law enforcement officers is wasteful. These cuts throughout our government are exaggerated by the extreme nominees who are really ill-equipped and ill-experienced to handle large governmental organizations.
The administration also continues to illegally dismantle Agencies without having congressional approval. They have attempted to freeze Federal funding--something the courts have halted but that the White House continues to pursue. Colorado and the American people are caught in their crosshairs.
I have committed to opposing nominees who pose a genuine threat to Colorado. We have also helped support lawsuits and oppose some of these Executive actions. I would be the first to admit our government isn't perfect. Government never will be. I would be the first to recognize that it takes all of our elected officials to do their duty for the American people and to be truthful and for our constituents to hold us accountable.
The American experiment in democratic government is just too important to confirm people who actively spread disinformation and refuse to follow science. It threatens Coloradans. It puts all of us at risk.
Mr. President, I would like to begin my remarks this afternoon by talking a little bit about the Constitution.
I spent some time last week talking about the Constitution and our failure to observe that the constitutional, fundamental structure of the division of power between the Congress and the Executive is being violated and that Congress is allowing it to happen.
Another provision of the Constitution is the provision in article I about advice and consent. It is a fundamental check and balance built into the Constitution, by the Framers, for a reason. It wasn't a throwaway line or a few sentences that were put in because they wanted to fill the paragraph out. Again, it is part of the structure that was designed to protect us from tyranny. The structure involved the division of power, the separation of power, because the Framers knew, if all power was concentrated in a single individual or a single institution, that that institution or that individual would inevitably abuse our people. That is human nature. That is 1,000 years of human nature. All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So the advice and consent provision was in the Constitution for a reason. It was in there for a reason in order to provide a check on the Executive and the people who were going to be put in charge of running the administration.
By the way, I want to stop for a minute and focus on the word ``administration'' and the word ``Executive'' because it really goes to the discussion we are having in this country right now about how our government is supposed to work.
The ``Executive'' comes from the word ``execute,'' and the word ``execute'' means ``to put into action.'' It doesn't mean to initiate the action. It means to put it into action. It is the same for the word ``administration.'' There is a reason we call it the administration. They are to administer the laws. In fact, the obligation on the President in article II is to see that the laws are faithfully executed. It does not give the President the power to ignore laws or to decide which laws he or she thinks are OK; to ignore the responsibility and constitutional authority of the Congress to define spending. It does not give the President that power; although the fellow we approved for the Office of Management and Budget last week thinks he has that power or this President or any President has that power. That is absolutely antithetical to the whole concept of the Constitution as established by the Framers.
So ``administration'' means administer the laws. ``Executive'' means execute the laws, not make them. We make the laws here, and the administration is to faithfully execute those laws.
Now, let's talk about ``advice and consent.'' ``Advice and consent'' means we have a responsibility--a constitutional responsibility--to consider each of the President's nominees for these important jobs. This isn't something that we may do or occasionally do; this is a fundamental part of our job.
We take an oath when we come here to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
I think it is interesting. They knew in 1787 that there was a potential for domestic enemies of the Constitution.
So we have an obligation to take ``advice and consent'' seriously.
Now, I am a former Governor, as is the Presiding Officer. And as a former executive, I believe the executive should have the ability to choose the team that they want, to choose their advisers, to choose the people who they will work with, with some limitations. In other words, I start with the premise that the person elected should--perhaps, ``get the benefit of the doubt'' is a little too strong. But I start with the premise that they were elected, and they should be able to choose the team that they are going to be working with.
However, I think there are two qualifications. And, by the way, this has been my stated position on this subject since I entered the Senate. We should give the benefit of the doubt to the Executive. However, the nominee must be manifestly qualified and not hostile to the mission of the Agency to which they have been appointed--two criteria, two criteria that, for me, give life to the idea of ``advice and consent.''
OK. Let's talk about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He, unfortunately, checks both of the boxes as to being disqualified. No. 1, he is not remotely qualified to run an organization of the magnitude of HHS. He has no background in management, no experience in running anything remotely like the scope and scale of the Department of Health and Human Services, no executive experience in that sense.
That is No. 1: Is he qualified? No, he is grossly unqualified.
But the second box is my criteria: Is he hostile to the mission of the Agency? And if the mission of the Agency, HHS, is to protect the health of the American people, I would argue he is manifestly hostile to that mission.
There has been a lot of discussion here today, and I think it is interesting. I don't know how this debate is
But let me focus on just one little piece. On January 29, barely a week ago, before the Senate Finance Committee, here is what Mr. Kennedy said:
I bet that came as news to a lot of the people he has been leading astray over the last 25 or 30 years.
I am reminded of Saul on the road to Damascus--a miraculous conversion. A bright light was shown, and, suddenly, the scales fell from his eyes in his confirmation hearing.
Let's go back, a little over a year, to July 6, 2023. This is a quote--a direct quote:
He later said on the podcast:
This man shouldn't be confirmed because he told the committee and the Senate something diametrically opposed to the position he has taken the last 30 years, all of his adult life.
Maya Angelou said if somebody tells you who they are, you should believe them. And he has told us repeatedly.
And he has acted on his vaccine skepticism. This isn't something that was rumbling around in his head. He has traveled the world. He has written articles. He has gone on podcasts. He has gone on TV. And he has discouraged people from being vaccinated. And now he has this miraculous conversion 10 days ago:
The same thing during COVID--he said:
Wow, criminal malpractice.
And, of course, as has been discussed, he said:
In July of 2023, there was one study in England--I think it was in 1998--that purported to show a tenuous connection between vaccines and autism. I am reasonably confident that one of the authors of that study recanted it. It was withdrawn, and it has been debunked over and over and over again. But this man has been peddling this lie for 20 years. Who knows how many parents have fallen for that, and who knows how children have paid the price.
Just to talk about vaccines, at one point during the pandemic, there was a survey in July of 2021. Remember, that was the height of it. They surveyed 50 hospitals in 17 States. Ninety-four percent of the patients hospitalized in July of 2021 were unvaccinated. What does that tell you? Vaccinations worked, and people who were unvaccinated were at an enormously higher risk--94 percent of the people were unvaccinated.
In addition to the vaccination issue, this man doesn't respect the FDA, the Agency that was put in place to protect our health, to regulate us, to be sure that we are getting safe medications, to deal with some of the awful problems of the potential of harmful medications literally getting into America's bloodstream.
In December of 2024, barely 2 months ago, he said he would fire officials at the FDA. And in October 2024, he said on X:
He didn't say a certain office in the FDA or a certain part of the FDA or maybe there was one provision or part that he didn't think was helpful. He said: ``If you work for the FDA''--that is everybody-- ``preserve your records, and . . . Pack your bags.''
This man is not only unqualified; he is anti-qualified. He is a danger.
We have physicians in the Senate. I believe that the Hippocratic Oath, ``Do no harm,'' should apply to Senate votes. You should not be voting for somebody who you know is going to do harm to the public health.
So this is really a kind of surreal debate because everybody in this Chamber knows this man should not be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Now, I want to end with a personal story. One of the few advantages of being older is that you have a long memory. In 1952, I was entering the third grade at MacArthur School in Alexandria, VA, and in my class in the third grade was a kid named Butch. He was horribly twisted into a wheelchair. I don't think I had ever seen a wheelchair when I was going into the third grade, but he was there.
And here it is--I am not even going to say how many years later, but I can close my eyes and see Butch in that chair. Polio was what he had. He was in pain daily. He could barely make himself understood. His arms were crossed. His legs were bent grotesquely in the wheelchair. And 3 years later, the Salk vaccine began what turned out to be the elimination of polio.
Where would we be as a country if this man had been the head of--at that time, it was HEW--and somehow put a stop to this vaccine, which I believe he has said even the polio vaccine should be rescinded, which has saved millions of lives around the world. Where would we be?
I can't escape the memory of that boy in that wheelchair. I can't escape the memory of my parents not letting me go to the public swimming pool because of the fear of polio, not being able to go out and play in the summer in Virginia because of the fear of polio that stalked the land.
The former Republican leader was a victim of polio. The former President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a victim of polio. And it was the vaccine that ended it.
I hope this place comes to its senses and rejects this surreal nomination. It would be hard to find someone less qualified to serve in this position. I believe it will lead to damage to our country, to our health, to our children.
I urge my colleagues to vote no. If you vote yes, you will regret it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. President, I want to just, first, comment on how much I appreciated the comments of my colleague from Maine, Senator King-- both in your elucidation of the deep challenges of the Robert Kennedy, Jr., nomination but also your close look at what the difference is between the legislative branch and the executive branch, and the role that we have in this body to provide advice and consent.
And I appreciated what you were saying about kind of what your North Star is when you look at these nominations.
I would say I agree with you that I do believe that incoming Presidents should be able to surround themselves with people whom they trust, and that, of course, we may strongly disagree with the President; however, he has the right to have people around him who agree with him.
But I think that there is something that you said, Senator King, that was extremely important. I also look at these nominations in terms of whether I believe they have the base-level qualifications to do the job. And then the second thing I ask myself is, Can I trust these individuals? Can I trust Robert Kennedy to follow the law?
I mean, that is fundamentally what their responsibility is--to, certainly, be loyal to the person who put them in that role, but also, at a base level, that they are going to follow the law.
So, Mr. President, I rise today to highlight what I consider to be the threat of Robert F. Kennedy, the threat that he poses to Americans' health and safety and well-being.
In fact, I have concluded--I have talked with him. I have listened to him. I have asked him questions, both in a private setting and also in committee. And I have read his words and his history. I can only conclude that he cannot be trusted with this important job; that I cannot trust him to follow the laws of this land.
I believe that Mr. Kennedy is wholly unqualified for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services,
Now, if you are listening to this, and you don't really know that much about the Department of Health and Human Services, you have got a busy life, you are trying to figure out how to afford your life and how to kind of hold it together in what is a very busy and complicated world, I want to just be clear about what I think Mr. Kennedy's confirmation would mean for Minnesota families. If he is allowed to become Secretary, I have concluded that your family will be less safe, that your loved ones will be more likely to get sick, and that you and the people you care about will be less likely to get the care you need.
As I have thought about this, what I find most disqualifying about Mr. Kennedy is how he has basically made his career--he has built a career around saying what he needs to say in order to get attention, and by getting attention, he is making money. I think it is just important to understand this. This is whether he is talking about vaccines or infectious diseases, whether he is talking about anything.
So you walk away from talking with this individual not entirely sure what it is that he believes because he does seem willing to say nearly anything to nearly everybody without actually considering what impact his words have on the lives of real people, whether he is talking about reproductive freedom, whether he is talking about mental health care, whether he is talking about infectious diseases, whether he is talking about vaccines.
So let's focus a bit on the question of vaccines because I think this is the thing that has gotten the most attention--and rightly so.
In decades of public appearances, as well as in our one-on-one meeting--the one-on-one meetings that I had with him--as well as when he talked about this in front of the Finance Committee, Mr. Kennedy has continued to promote harmful and dangerous information--information that if people followed and they paid attention to him and they did what he suggested, it could do real harm to their families; it could hurt them.
If you think about vaccines, this is his long and very public record of denying the safety and the efficacy of vaccines. In fact, he has spent almost the last two decades of his life promoting these harmful and false theories that vaccines will cause autism and that they are otherwise unsafe.
As an example, in 2021, he proudly described stopping strangers out on hikes and telling them not to vaccinate their babies. Can you imagine that? You are out walking around, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., comes up to you--a man of stature and power--and says: Don't vaccinate your children.
Those words have impact.
During a podcast interview in July of 2023, Mr. Kennedy said--and I believe Senator King quoted this as well:
So, OK, just think about that. He is saying: Don't pay any attention to the science. Don't pay any attention to the experts. I am going to tell you that there is no vaccine that is safe and effective.
Those words have consequences.
The online store is another example. Mr. Kennedy's organization, the Children's Health Defense--there is an online store. You can all go on and check it out. You will find there that they are still selling little baby onesies and T-shirts for little children that have messages on them like ``Unvaccinated, Unafraid.''
Now, of course, here we are on the verge of a vote to decide whether the U.S. Senate is going to confirm Mr. Kennedy, and, of course, now he is denying all of that. He is distancing himself from all of these past statements. But you can't run away from your words, certainly in this day and age--and, I would argue, in any day and age. Those words are out there. You said them. They are on the record. They are on video. And it matters what the Secretary of Health and Human Services says, what he says about these things, and, of course, it matters what he doesn't say as well. Words have real consequences.
Just the mere fact of his presence being as the head of this Agency, just the fact that he sits there is going to be a factor that will cause some people not to know whether they can trust vaccines. He is in a position of power and authority. He has a high and loud bully pulpit--an individual who has told Americans, both when he was out on hikes, stopping them as they are walking by, and on every media megaphone that he could find, that vaccines are neither safe nor effective. Yet here he is about to assume, unless my colleagues come to their senses, this most highest, you could argue, public health job that affects the health of all of our families. This is an unbelievable and an unacceptable risk to the health and safety of Americans.
I also wanted to highlight for my colleagues an exchange that I had with Mr. Kennedy when he came before the Finance Committee, where I serve. I wanted to ask him about a statement that he had made about Americans and antidepressants. When I probed him on this, I confronted him with some things he had said in the past about antidepressants. Basically, he attributed a connection between people who are using antidepressants and school shootings. I asked him about that, and I asked him whether he thought that folks who take antidepressants are dangerous or not. He refused to even say that Americans who take antidepressants are not dangerous. He could not even get those words out of his mouth. In fact, he doubled down on his claims that antidepressants do cause school shootings, and he claimed that this is an area that needs to be studied and that he knows people who have had ``a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they have getting off heroin.''
Now, this is a typical strategy that I saw Mr. Kennedy take with many of our colleagues both on the HELP Committee and on the Finance Committee. When confronted with the facts and asked whether he believed the science and the facts, he would always say some version of ``Show me the data; show me the information'' even when the research is settled, the data is settled.
Here, let me come to this question about whether or not antidepressants are dangerous and are somehow a contributor to school shootings, which is an outrageous thing to say.
There is a study in 2019 that was published in the Journal of Behavioral Science and Law, and it says it appears that ``most school shooters weren't treated with psychotropic medication before their attacks. Even when they were, no direct or causal association was found.''
I was stunned when Mr. Kennedy again sort of said ``Well, I don't believe that research'' or ``I need to see other data; we need to look at this.'' Of course, he is not willing to accept the facts and the science. He is not willing to do that.
I am simply not willing to trust Mr. Kennedy when it comes to ensuring that your children, your loved ones, the folks that you care about in your lives, are going to actually have access to the mental health treatments they need to live their lives as productively as they possibly can.
It also, I think, is worth noting that these comments that Mr. Kennedy is making linking antidepressants to school shootings--what it does, of course, is it perpetuates the stigma that so many Americans who struggle with mental illness, mental health--so many of those Americans struggle with the stigma, and they already feel that, and yet here is potentially the next head of Health and Human Services who is perpetuating this stigma in a very real way.
I have seen this in my own life. I have seen people who have been bowed down by this feeling that they can't talk about their challenges with their mental health because people are going to think less of them. It is a stigma that I have spent my time in the Senate working in a bipartisan way to try to break down. So to see it perpetuated in this way by Mr. Kennedy is just such a clear reason why he cannot be trusted.
The rigorous, peer-reviewed research on SSRIs--a common form of antidepressant--is the science Mr. Kennedy has willingly chosen to ignore, but it is not the only science he has willfully chosen to ignore. Mr. Kennedy said during his confirmation hearings
In fact, as my colleague Senator Hassan made so abundantly clear in the committee, over 40 safety studies have demonstrated what Mr. Kennedy was not willing to see, which is that there is clear evidence that this medication is safe.
On reproductive freedom, Mr. Kennedy has proven himself wholly untrustworthy, repeatedly flip-flopping on his position depending on whom he is talking to. Now, this is something that many of us have seen in our lives--a person who will say one thing to one person and another thing to another person, all with the goal, it seems, of winning friends and influencing people, but this is not the kind of character you want to see in this most important job at the Federal Government, leading the Department of Health and Human Services.
Here is just a bit of an example of how this has played out with Mr. Kennedy on the issue of reproductive freedom and abortion rights. On the morning of August 13, 2023, Mr. Kennedy said:
Now, people may agree or disagree with this view, but it is clear what he is saying here.
The very same day, his campaign followed up by saying that his position on abortion is that it is always the woman's right to choose and that he does not support legislation banning abortion.
So on the same day, two different positions.
Then, on May 19, 2024, a few months later, in a podcast interview, he said:
This is a quote.
We shouldn't have government involved.
OK. So there is a completely different view.
Then the very next day, he tweeted:
Mr. Kennedy seems to change his mind so often that we don't know what he actually thinks, what he actually stands for. But when you are the Secretary of Health and Human Services, you have to stand up for something. You have to stand up for the laws of the land.
What is clear through all of this back-and-forth--it is clear to me-- is that the Trump administration and Mr. Kennedy are more than willing to restrict or even ban access to medication abortion despite the fact that they have been determined to be safe and effective and that Mr. Kennedy and President Trump are, in fact, dangerous to a woman's access to medication abortion.
I want people just to think about this for a minute. If you live in a State like mine, in Minnesota, where the State has determined that abortion should be accessible, that this is a decision that is up for people to be able to make on their own without government interference--and roughly 60 percent, maybe a bit more now, of abortions are done through medication abortion. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Donald Trump are going to affect your rights in Minnesota if they take away the right to mifepristone just as much as they affect the rights of somebody who is living in Texas or any of our States.
Mr. President, I want to change the topic to discuss a bit the question of infectious diseases and how Mr. Kennedy has taken similarly unfounded positions--positions that are not based on the science at all.
On infectious diseases, he has taken a position that I think could put Minnesota families at risk. Here is an example of that. At a Children's Health Defense conference in November of 2023--this is the anti-vax organization that Mr. Kennedy led for the last 7 years--Mr. Kennedy said that he is ``gonna say to the NIH scientists, God bless you all. Thank you for public service. We're going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.''
Now, Mr. Kennedy and President Trump may want to give infectious diseases a break for the next 8 years, but I am pretty sure that infectious diseases are not going to give the United States of America a break for the next 8 years.
Here is a classic example of that. Across the country, we are facing a very real public health threat from avian flu. In Minnesota, farmers and producers know this better than anywhere, although it is certainly not affecting only Minnesota; it is affecting many of our States. This is an infectious disease that is infecting flocks of wild birds and also domesticated poultry. Nearly 150 million chickens across the United States have had to be culled, had to be euthanized, to prevent the spread of the virus. In the last year, bird flu has jumped from poultry to livestock, often to dairy cows, and then from livestock to humans--often, the individuals that are working in livestock operations. So this is something we have to take seriously.
This is important for us to pay attention to. We need surveillance. We need to be working on treatments. We need to be evaluating whether we need to be finding a pathway potentially to some sort of a vaccine.
Avian flu is not going to take an 8-year break. It is already infecting chickens and livestock, and it is already infecting Americans.
And I know that in Minnesota, people want somebody leading the Department of Health and Human Services who is paying attention to this and wants to be on top of this.
You know, one of the things that is sort of incredible, when you dive into the things that Mr. Kennedy has written, is that it is not even really clear if Mr. Kennedy believes that germs cause disease.
I mean, if you read his words on this, you come away with a very concerning perspective. For six pages in one of his recent books, just as an example, he extols the virtue of something called the miasma theory while simultaneously casting doubt on the basic and well- accepted scientific evidence that germs cause disease.
You know, Mr. Kennedy doesn't even really describe this miasma theory correctly, but he most certainly doesn't accurately represent germ theory, which is the basic understandable concept that medical students are introduced to at the very beginning of their medical education that germs, viruses, bacteria are the cause of many, many human illnesses.
You know, and this is the kind of stuff that if it were coming from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, people are going to listen to this. And I just, like, think about the chilling effects that this could have on the healthcare that people are able to seek and receive, particularly if Mr. Kennedy is going to be dialing back or stopping the research on infectious diseases that is the lifeblood of the United States public health work that we do.
At the Finance Committee and then the next day at the HELP Committee, my colleagues and I gave Mr. Kennedy opportunity after opportunity to dispel the false and misleading claim he has spread for decades and to distance himself from these past positions. And we gave him the chance to tell Americans that he would keep them and their children safe and that he wouldn't threaten their access to treatments or to cures or to care and that he believed the research that is out there and accessible to anybody and everybody who wants to see it--the research that is taught at medical schools, the research that is followed by National Institutes of Health, and he couldn't do it. He couldn't just say that vaccines don't cause autism. He couldn't just tell us that antidepressants don't cause school shootings.
He couldn't just tell us that he will make sure that America's health insurance is protected. I mean, he could barely--in his conversations and the questions that he was asked, he could barely articulate that he understood the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. Instead, what happened is that Mr. Kennedy repeatedly talked about following the good science, the science that is good. But the science that he relies on is not good.
And in so many circumstances, he quotes science or studies that have been disproven. The studies that he has referenced have been withdrawn, or they don't say what he claims or purports to say that they do.
Most of all, what happens is that this has the potential to hold our researchers and our scientific community back from making the real progress that we need to make when it comes to medicine and disease and treating ailments.
Think about the progress that we could one day make to help cure cancer, to prevent Alzheimer's. If we have to revisit the history, the record of science, because Mr. Kennedy says that he doesn't think it shows what everybody else thinks it shows, think about how that is going to set us back, how that is going to keep us from moving forward to address the real health challenges of today and tomorrow.
Think about what it might have meant if Mr. Kennedy had led the Department of Health and Human Services when we were in the midst of Operation Warp Speed and we were doing everything that we possibly could to get a vaccine out to Americans and the world to stop the millions of deaths that were happening because of the COVID-19 virus.
What would have happened if Mr. Kennedy, sitting in that position of authority, had said: I don't believe the science; I think we need to do more. I don't think any vaccine is safe and effective; and, therefore, I want to call this vaccine back.
And, in fact, that is what Mr. Kennedy did. He submitted a call to the Department of Health and Human Services in the early days of the vaccine saying that he thought that it should be pulled back from the market.
Think about what impact that could have had on all of our families if he had been in a position of authority and had been able to accomplish that. Over and over again, when he is faced with the actual science-- for example, on the science that proves that SSRIs are not associated with school shootings, that vaccines do not cause autism, that germs do cause illnesses--he has refused to accept it, and he has doubled down on his dangerous beliefs.
So this is concerning when it is an individual who is speaking on a podcast, but it could be a matter of life or death when it is the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. As I think about what I said at the beginning of my remarks about my strong belief that my job as Senator is to assess whether I can trust somebody in this role, can I trust them to follow the law? Can I trust this individual to protect the health and well-being of the people in my State and the people around the country? The answer is clearly, no, this is an individual who cannot be trusted.
At the heart of this nomination, of course--the heart of the work of the Department of Health and Human Services--is America's health and healthcare. And it is clear to me that Mr. Kennedy has made it clear that he will enable the Trump and Musk agenda of chaos, that he will enable what they are doing not to execute the laws of this country, which is their constitutional responsibility, but to attempt to make the laws of this country.
And, you know, we can see this during his confirmation hearings. Repeatedly during his confirmation hearings, Mr. Kennedy said that he would follow Mr. Trump's directives.
Now, I am going to be clear about this, I understand that it is the job of any Cabinet official to follow the policies of the individual who has put them there, but not if those policies break the laws of the United States of America.
Department heads, Cabinet heads, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services is required to execute the law, not to execute the will of the President--because the President is a President; he is not a king.
What I am convinced of at this stage is as we see what, I believe, is a massive power grab by Donald Trump and Elon Musk to not just execute the laws but to make the laws, that Mr. Kennedy would be a part of that process, that he would be an enabler of that power grab that we see happening all over the country. And that is another reason why I cannot trust him.
I want to take a look for a minute at the directives that President Trump has put out already. Let's take a look at these--these directives of stopping lawfully executed payments to healthcare organizations that have been made following the will of Congress, the people who are supposed to be making the laws in this country.
I heard a lot about this from Minnesota, huge amounts of concern reflected back to me in my office about what is actually happening with the President's directives, basically directing to withhold funding that Congress has authorized.
I heard from Minnesota's community health centers that they were going to begin doing layoffs because of this Federal funding freeze-- basically, a massive cut that they are experiencing. You know, community health centers are all over the country, and in my home State of Minnesota, they are the place that individuals can go to get basic, preventative healthcare. It is a very important part of our healthcare network, and yet many of these have come to me and said that they are basically going to be laying off providers and other folks who are providing direct care to patients.
One community health center's CEO in greater Minnesota, outside of the metro area, said that it was the worst day in his 38-year career when he got word of this freeze.
Now, I understand that this freeze has been unfrozen for now, at least in some cases--though, in other cases it seems like it is back on again. In fact, I hear repeatedly that it is off and on and off and on in this sort of chaotic and confusing dance that they have started.
But these clinics are still facing real challenges about getting access to their Federal funding, and this is threatening their operations. Imagine if you were running a--like a small bootstrap and, you know, small little health center and every day you are just trying to make payroll. You don't have millions of dollars sitting in your bank account waiting for a rainy day. Every day is a rainy day, and every day you are just trying to make it work. And very suddenly, one of your most important ways of paying to provide healthcare to an individual has just evaporated overnight.
So then what happens--because people still get sick, people still need healthcare, even if they are unable to get it at a community health center. So what do they do?
Think about this, right now, in Minnesota--it is probably the same in West Virginia and other parts of the country--Minnesota emergency rooms are packed full of people who have the flu or RSV or norovirus. They go to the emergency rooms. You want to go to the emergency room when you really, really need emergency care. You go to a community health center when you need to be able to get access to urgent care but the care that you need right now. And what is happening is that because there are a lot of illnesses, people are getting sick in the wintertime, it is like 20 below in Minnesota right now, if they can't get their primary care in a doctor's office, in a clinic, they are going to end up in the ER.
And then what happens to all the rest of us who really might need emergency care? The ER is jammed to overflowing. There is no space. You have to wait 5 hours to get the care that you need. That is what is happening with this funding that is being put in jeopardy. That means that community health centers might not be able to help the patients that they typically help. And I am not talking about a small number of people here. That is 170,000 people in Minnesota who rely on community health centers.
And what is going to happen, those folks are going to end up in emergency rooms, and that is going to increase wait times, and it is going to stress the capacity of hospitals to provide care that people need.
President Trump did this. Robert F. Kennedy, if he were head of Health and Human Services, I have no reason to trust that he would stop this. In fact, I believe the opposite, I believe he would enable it. And this is why I think his nomination will end up making all of us less healthy and less safe and less secure.
President Trump, in another example, unlawfully cut National Institutes of Health grant funding earlier this week. This amounts to millions of dollars that support lifesaving research
This was retroactive; it happened overnight. Hospitals are left struggling. Big research hospitals like the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic are suddenly looking at massive cuts to their research.
They have trials for important, you know, treatments and cures for serious diseases that are suddenly thrown into chaos, and you have individuals who are part of those trials who are hopeful that they are going to be getting--they are hopeful that, in some way, that this is going to help them to find a cure for what disease is ailing them.
And with this cut to NIH funding, overnight massive cuts, what does that mean for people's health and safety and security? It means people are less well-off. National Institutes of Health is under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services, the organization that Mr. Kennedy is asking Congress to provide advice and consent on.
Again, I have no confidence. In fact, I am sure that Mr. Kennedy would be an enabler to President Trump's power grab here and his undermining, along with Elon Musk, his undermining of this extremely important research that helps us be healthy, helps us find the treatments and the cures for the diseases that are a threat to all of us.
So I see my colleague from Massachusetts is here. I know she has an important perspective on this, with Massachusetts being another--as is Minnesota--another center of research and education and medical education, and I suspect that we agree with one another when it comes to the threat that Robert F. Kennedy poses to all of our health and well-being.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I want to say thanks to the Senator from Minnesota for her leadership on this point. I know that great research institutions in Minnesota that count on her support are out there fighting, thanks to Donald Trump, as they are in Massachusetts--and people all around this country who rely on those research institutions, who are looking for those cures, for those better treatments, for those opportunities in their lives that, right now, Donald Trump and his co- President Elon Musk seem to want to cut off.
So we will stay in this fight. We will indeed.
I am here today because Americans didn't vote to bring back measles. Americans didn't vote to bring back polio. Americans didn't vote to bring back dangerous diseases that we thought we had wiped out decades ago. Americans didn't vote to get rid of critical vaccines that we know--based on science--we know save lives.
But that is what Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s vision would mean for Americans. That is the vision that Donald Trump will empower him to carry out.
Kennedy not only worked to undercut vaccines at home and abroad; he has made a lot of money doing it. In fact, Kennedy has made millions off of peddling harmful conspiracy theories that hurt real people. He opposed the lifesaving COVID vaccine just 6 months into the pandemic, and he set himself up so that he and his family could make millions more from putting Americans' health at risk.
One thing is very clear: We cannot trust Robert Kennedy to make healthcare decisions that will affect every person in this country.
Right now, millions of Americans are sitting down for dinner with their kids, and I hope we just think for a minute about what RFK, Jr.'s plans would mean for them.
Will their teeth decay because Kennedy took fluoride out of the water based on some conspiracy theory? Will they have to worry about getting measles at school because Kennedy is spreading anti-vax conspiracies on government letterhead? Will parents have to risk their kids getting polio and maybe dying by sending them to daycare because Kennedy used his HHS rules to open the door to a flood of bogus lawsuits that force manufacturers to pull the vaccines?
Look, here is the thing: Robert Kennedy has spent years on an anti- vaccine crusade, spreading baseless conspiracy theories under the guise of protecting children. So we don't need to guess the level of harm he will cause. His past already tells us everything we need to know.
In July 2018, two children died immediately after receiving a measles vaccine that nurses had incorrectly mixed with a muscle relaxant. Within weeks, the Samoan Health Ministry publicly confirmed the nursing error and charged the nurses with manslaughter.
Nevertheless, leading anti-vaccine groups--including Kennedy's own organization, Children's Health Defense--exploited public fears to question the reports and spread baseless claims.
On August 5, 2018, Kennedy's organization, Children's Health Defense, posted on Facebook--and I will quote the post:
Del Bigtree, Kennedy's partner and former campaign manager, also released a video linking the tragedy to false claims about measles and telling his followers to ``share it with everyone you know. This is how we are changing the world.''
Now, amidst public distrust and a paused vaccine program in Samoa, the vaccination rates plummeted. About 10 months later, once the Samoan Government had finally stood up against the disinformation and resumed the vaccine program, Kennedy visited the island to meet with the Prime Minister.
Later, recognizing the blowback that comes with how much went wrong when a conspiracy theory cost people their lives, Kennedy has since denied that his visit had anything to do with vaccines and said that anything suggesting otherwise was ``an industry propaganda trope''--in other words, totally false--``an industry propaganda trope.'' Kennedy lied.
A blog post that Kennedy himself wrote in 2021 admits that he went to Samoa to meet with the Prime Minister, who wanted to discuss the possibility of ``measur[ing] health outcomes following the `natural experiment' created by the nation's respite from vaccines.''
Think about what that means. Another way to say it is that Kennedy was interested in taking advantage of how the vaccination rate had plummeted--caused by misinformation--so that they could conduct uncontrolled trials on whether unvaccinated kids were healthier than vaccinated kids, a conspiracy theory that he had widely spread.
You see, at the time, one of his traveling partners was working on a similar study with two anti-vaccine activists, which was ultimately retracted, following an investigation that ``raised several methodological issues and confirmed that the conclusions were not supported by strong scientific data.''
Now there is no surprise here. The Prime Minister of Samoa declined Kennedy's outrageous proposal. He didn't want his country to be Kennedy's guinea pig. He didn't want unvaccinated children to be studied to see what happened to them when measles or other diseases broke out.
But that didn't stop Kennedy from spreading his message. On this trip to Samoa, he met with various anti-vaccine influencers, one of whom said the meeting was ``profoundly monumental for the movement.''
A few months after Kennedy left, in October 2019, the vaccination rate in Samoa hit a historic low of 31 percent, down from 74 percent the prior year. And, no surprise, a massive measles outbreak erupted.
So here is Kennedy telling us now: No, no, he had nothing--nothing-- to do with this. His trip to Samoa had nothing to do with the measles vaccine, and calling any claim ``industry propaganda trope,'' and yet he himself posted a blog about meeting with the Prime Minister and talking about a study to measure health outcomes following a natural experiment of studying children, some with no vaccination and some that were vaccinated.
And the anti-vax groups he met with talked about how profoundly important it is. Then Mr. Kennedy leaves. Vaccination rates drop down to 31 percent.
The measles outbreak was truly tragic. In total, more than 70 children died,
As HHS Secretary, Kennedy would be responsible for whether we keep our children vaccinated or subject them to, in his word, the same ``natural experiment'' that he was interested in testing in Samoa. Is that really what we want for our kids? Is that what we want for our elderly parents? That is a living nightmare, and it could truly be our reality with Kennedy heading up the Department of Health and Human Services.
And all the while that this is going on, while Kennedy is promoting this anti-vax theory, he and his family are profiting off the plan.
Now, I have been sounding the alarm about Kennedy since the minute Donald Trump announced that he would nominate him for HHS Secretary. It is not just that he is unqualified; his long history of promoting anti- science conspiracy theories make him disqualified.
This is a man who claimed ``there is no vaccine that is safe and effective''--``no vaccine.''
He said that the polio vaccine ``killed many, many more people than polio ever did.''
Now, Kennedy came to our committee and said: Don't worry. He swears he is not anti-vaccine. But he has spent years on an anti-vaccine crusade, spreading baseless conspiracy theories under the guise of protecting children, and making millions of dollars in the process.
And when, in Senate hearings, he was confronted with his own words, he simply denied saying them. He denied saying them, despite the videotapes, the transcripts, the blog posts, and the people who heard them.
Kennedy thinks he knows what he needs to say to try to get the job that will put him in charge of our vaccine program. So he says he didn't say exactly what he said. Kennedy's actions speak louder than his latest words. And time and time again, Kennedy has shown us who he is: an anti-science conspiracy peddler who is willing to gamble with American lives. We know who he is. We need to pay attention.
Let's do a quick count of some of the ways that, as HHS Secretary, Kennedy could make the anti-vaccine lawsuits and his own payouts even bigger. What could Kennedy do? Well, as Secretary of HHS, he could publish his anti-vaccine conspiracies, but this time on U.S. Government letterhead, something that might impress a jury in a subsequent trial. He could appoint people to the CDC vaccine panel who share his anti-vax views and let them do his dirty work. He could tell the CDC vaccine panel to remove a particular vaccine from the vaccination schedule. He could remove vaccines from a special compensation program, which ``would open up manufacturers to mass torts'' lawsuits. He could make more injuries eligible for compensation, even if there is no causal evidence. He could change vaccine court processes to make it easier to bring junk lawsuits that could get vaccines pulled from the market. He could turn over FDA to his friends at the law firm, and they could use it however benefits their lawsuits.
In short, as HHS Secretary, Kennedy would have the power to make healthcare decisions that would affect millions of Americans--working Americans, kids, seniors--on everything from vaccines to abortion to lifesaving drugs.
Kennedy would have the capacity as head of HHS to make it easier to sue vaccine manufacturers. And in an area where the profit margins on vaccines are quite modest, if those lawsuits mount up, vaccines could simply disappear from the market all together. Manufacturers could decide: You know, it is just not worth the lawsuits. We will go produce other drugs.
Those kinds of decisions are critically important, and the consequences are grave. For many Americans, they may be the difference between life and death, and they could change lives forever.
So while you and your family are forced to deal with the grave consequences of Kennedy's conspiracy-driven healthcare decisions, Kennedy could set himself up to make millions of dollars off his anti- vaccine crusade, just like he has been doing for decades.
Remember, the very first ethics agreement that Kennedy submitted to us on the Senate Finance Committee, he said that even while he served as Secretary of HHS, he planned to keep a financial stake in ongoing litigation, including vaccine-related litigation. That means that from the jump, Kennedy's plan was to keep making money off the backs of lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, some of which directly related to the very products he would have the power to regulate as Secretary of HHS.
So there he is. He has the power to regulate these drugs. He has the power to make life a little better or a little worse for the vaccine manufacturers. He has the power to make it more likely that lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers would succeed. And his initial plan was-- even while he sat there as Secretary of HHS, he was going to keep on making money from that.
This was a damning conflict of interest, so we called it out. Kennedy told us, OK, OK, he would submit an updated ethics agreement. Sounds good. What was his update? Well, he said that instead of personally keeping the millions that he would make off these ongoing lawsuits, he would hand that money directly to his son.
Later, he confirmed that the son he is handing his interests off to is the one who works at Wisner Baum, the same law firm that Kennedy has maintained this very lucrative arrangement with over the years, so far netting him a reported $2.5 million just in the last few years.
Kennedy has made clear that he can use his tools as HHS Secretary to open up the door for more anti-vax litigation and, once he is through as Secretary of HHS, go right back to Wisner Baum and cash in on the new flood of cases that Kennedy himself has unleashed. So that is Kennedy's idea of fixing an ethics issue.
Beyond that, Kennedy has flip-flopped countless times in his answers to the Finance Committee. He is untrustworthy. He has made so many contradictory statements that it has come to the point that it is hard to believe anything he says is true.
For example, Kennedy originally said he was not an attorney of record in any of these vaccine-related lawsuits, but we did a little homework, and we found at least five cases related to the vaccine litigation that hadn't been disclosed where Kennedy appears to be the attorney of record. That is important because what it means is that Kennedy is a lot closer to these cases than he is revealing--cases that he and his family will be able to make bank off even as he serves as Secretary at the HHS.
The importance of this litigation cannot be overstated. Just 20 years ago, we watched vaccine makers pull their product off the market because they didn't have protection from these kinds of lawsuits. The consequence of Kennedy's ability to make those lawsuits easier is also the ability to shut down access and manufacturing for vaccines for every one of us, and I think that is a terrible mistake.
Kennedy claims that he is taking on Big Pharma, but that is the lie he is peddling to hide his conflicts. I pressed him on real ways to take on the industry, including using march-in on Big Pharma's patents when they use taxpayer funds to bring drugs to market and then turn around and jack up prices on hard-working Americans and by having the government negotiate prices directly with Big Pharma on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries.
But Kennedy, after talking a big game about taking on Big Pharma, said no, he doesn't support march-in rights and, no, he didn't want to commit to defending Medicare price negotiations--two proven methods to take on the drug industry and put money back into Americans' pockets.
So whose side is he on? Well, one thing is for sure: RFK, Jr., is on the side of his own bottom line.
He has also refused to share a list of cases that he stands to benefit from. I told you he said, nope, he was not attorney of record on any cases. We dug around, and we found five. How many more are there? Well, here is what Kennedy said when we said: Just give us a list of the cases that you are participating in so we can take a look at the possible conflicts. His answer: The list is so long and the conflicts so clear that evidently it would be more damning than what we already know.
Kennedy's list of ethics issues and financial issues are a mile long, and there is still too much that he refuses to reveal.
Think about this. He has already told us enough about his conflicts, about how he plans to keep making money even while he is Secretary of HHS. He revealed all that right up front. He said: Yes, I am going to make money while I am Secretary of HHS. Yet, on basic questions like ``Can you just give us a list of the cases you participated in?'' he says ``No, I can't do that,'' which really makes you ask, what on Earth is he hiding?
He is dodging questions from the Senate, he is contradicting himself, and he keeps changing his answers in order to muddy the waters and really make it hard to understand what is going on.
Look, no one is fooled here. Kennedy has said he will ``slam shut the revolving door'' between government Agencies and the companies they regulate, but what he won't agree to is to cut off his own family's steady stream of money flowing in from lawsuits that he personally can directly affect while he is Secretary of HHS.
Kennedy knows that these conflicts are serious, and that is why he scrambled to update his ethics agreement and hand off his interests to his son in a desperate attempt to ``fix'' things. But that simply isn't good enough when millions of Americans' lives are hanging in the balance.
Don't take it just from me; take it from the Wall Street Journal editorial board. They wrote:
The Wall Street Journal: ``This ought to be disqualifying.''
It is simple: If Kennedy wants to prove he was serious about ``slamming shut the revolving door'' between industry and people making money from their positions in government, I laid out a list of commitments he should make immediately.
Senator Wyden, the ranking member on the Finance Committee, and I wrote:
That was part 1 that we want.
In other words, Senator Wyden and I laid out a path where he truly could avoid the conflicts of interest. If he wants to serve his country and not his own pocketbook, we have shown him a way that he can do this.
Senator Kaine and I followed up on this and wrote to Kennedy:
Continuing with our letter:
In other words, we showed you another way that you can get this done.
Look, this is just common sense. I would hope that my Republican colleagues would agree that our HHS nominee should not have ongoing, lucrative agreements that enable his immediate family to line their pockets while he influences healthcare decisions that impact millions of Americans.
It is not just attacks on vaccines that we have to worry about from the Trump administration. In the middle of the night last Friday, Donald Trump announced deep cuts to the National Institutes of Health funding, which powers the lifesaving research and medical breakthroughs at universities and medical institutions across the country, especially in my home State of Massachusetts. These Trump cuts will stop research that is working to help cure diseases, it will force people who are working now to lose good jobs, and it will literally threaten people's lives.
As head of HHS, Kennedy would oversee the National Institutes of Health, and he would green-light Trump's plan to gut the Agency. He has made no commitments to protect the critical, lifesaving research that NIH funds, and maybe that should be no surprise given his years of attacking basic scientific facts.
Listen to what experts have had to say about what these cuts will mean for families across America:
As one expert said:
For so many rare diseases and illnesses where research is already underfunded, like childhood cancer, researchers have said:
I don't know how you make that up. These funding cuts are putting scientists in a position where they have to default on the promises they made--promises they made to people to join their studies, promises they made to other researchers to join them, promises they made to build up the labs and to build up the work that would make a difference in our world.
When the NIH and the NSF put out their solicitations, they are asking for critical scientific research to be done on behalf of the American people. That research cures diseases and saves lives. The institutions that apply for these solicitations are saying enthusiastically: Yes, we can do that. Yes, we share that dream. Yes, we believe that we can make a better product, that we can make a better medicine, that we can make a better treatment for people who are suffering, and we want to be part of that.
And now here we are in chaos and confusion, and the U.S. Government is trying to break that contract. Americans will suffer because of it.
This is Trump's plan for Americans' health, and Kennedy will be a rubberstamp for whatever Donald Trump wants to do.
Let's talk just a little bit more about that COVID vaccine.
Do you remember how, in the dead of the pandemic, hundreds of millions of Americans were counting on that vaccine as the light at the end of the tunnel; how, when we were shut away from our friends and family and trying to keep ourselves and our communities safe, that vaccine allowed us to come together again; how that vaccine saved countless more lives that otherwise would have been lost to COVID?
Well, just make sure you know: Kennedy tried to stop you and your family from having access to the COVID vaccine.
I will just read a little portion of one of the articles from last month on this:
All--
Mr. Kennedy filed a petition with the FDA in May 2021, demanding that officials rescind authorization for the shots and refrain from approving any COVID vaccine in the interim. Just 6 months earlier, Mr. Trump had declared the COVID vaccines a miracle. At the time Mr. Kennedy filed the petition, half of American adults were receiving their shots. Schools were starting to reopen, and churches were filling. Estimates have begun to show that the rapid roll-out of COVID vaccines have already saved 140,000 lives in the United States.
The petition was filed on behalf of the nonprofit that Mr. Kennedy founded and led, Children's Health Defense, which we talked about earlier. It claimed the risks of vaccines outweighed the benefits and that the vaccines weren't necessary because good treatments were available, including ivermectin and--I just can't believe this-- hydroxychloroquine, which had already been deemed ineffective against the virus.
The petition received little notice when it was filed. Mr. Kennedy was then on the fringes of the public health establishment, and the Agency denied it within months. Public health experts told about the filing said it was truly shocking.
You know, I want to underscore this one because Mr. Kennedy is saying now--not only is he saying he is not an anti-vaxxer; he is saying he wants you to still be able to vaccinate your children if you want to do that. Yet look at Mr. Kennedy's own actions. Mr. Kennedy tried to stop all of us--everyone in America--from getting access to the COVID vaccine. He cites junk science. It was already known to be junk science at the time that he cites it. He cites junk science in order to say, not just that he doesn't want to take the vaccine or not just that he doesn't want to give it to his kids, but he didn't want anybody in America to be able to get that.
So that is the man that the Republicans will be voting on to decide whether or not he makes healthcare policy in the United States--someone who is continuing to line his own pocket with lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and someone who has tried to stop at least one vaccine from being distributed to anyone anywhere in America.
Look, when Kennedy says he doesn't believe in vaccines, which he has said many times, believe him. When his attempt at fixing his ethics issue is passing his stake to his son, believe him. When he says he will do whatever Donald Trump wants on abortion, believe him. Don't say: No one will let him go that far, because they will let him go that far.
Republicans voting for Kennedy know exactly who they are voting for-- someone who spreads baseless conspiracy theories, someone who profits off making our kids sicker, someone who will do whatever Donald Trump tells him to do, whether it is cutting off cancer research funding or banning abortion medication.
Let us be very clear: When it comes to your health and your well- being and the health and well-being of your friends, your family, your community, Kennedy is disqualified, dangerous, and cannot be given the power to make critical healthcare decisions. I urge my colleagues to vote no on his nomination.
I see that Senator Kaine is here. Senator Kaine has been a tireless partner in the fight to help protect the Nation's healthcare system, and I appreciate his being here tonight.
Mr. President, I am so happy that I follow my colleague from Massachusetts. I will build upon some of the points that she has made, but we have served as colleagues together on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee during earlier terms of Congress, and you won't find a better champion for the health of the American public than Senator Warren.
I stand to continue the dialogue about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and his unfitness for the position to which he has been nominated, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and I will give you the punch line but then go into it in some detail.
I don't believe Mr. Kennedy can separate fact from fiction. I don't believe Mr. Kennedy can separate conspiracy from content. Now, you wouldn't want someone suffering from that challenge in any position of leadership at any level of government--local, State, or Federal. But this particular position, the Secretary of Health and Human Services-- one of the most important positions in the Nation as with respect to people's physical and mental health, is exactly the wrong kind of a position for someone who can't tell fact from fiction or content from conspiracy, because the American public needs to be able to rely on HHS and other critical Agencies for information that is not just about the state of their savings account or housing costs. This is about life and death. This is about life and death.
I want to talk about two elements of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.--my colleagues have been going into many of them--that lead me to the conclusion that here is a guy who can't separate fact from fiction or conspiracy from content.
The first was ably described by Senator Warren, and that is Mr. Kennedy's skepticism about vaccines. I know many of my colleagues trod this ground during speeches today, so I am not going to go into the breadth of his vaccine skepticism. I am going to talk about one vaccine in particular that is made in Virginia, Gardasil. I represent the Commonwealth of Virginia. There is a facility in Elkton, VA, in the Shenandoah Valley, near Harrisonburg, that makes Gardasil, the vaccine that has been effective--significantly effective--in preventing and reducing the incidence of cervical cancer.
Think about it for a minute. Vaccines do a lot of different things, but a vaccine that can prevent cancer is truly, truly revolutionary.
Cervical cancer and other associated cancers pose very significant challenges to men and women. In the early 2000s, the FDA approved a cervical cancer vaccine. There are a number of vaccine manufacturers, but one of the largest is Merck that manufactures Gardasil in Virginia. I visited the plant a couple of years back as a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. I went to the plant, and I talked to the workers and saw the pride that they have in being able to develop a product that has had such a significant impact around the world.
When I was Governor of Virginia, with two Republican houses, we acted to have a mandate around the Gardasil vaccination, around the cervical cancer vaccination. There are other cancer vaccine manufacturers as well. By making it mandatory, we enabled people to access it for free. We allowed any parent or student who didn't want to receive the vaccine to opt out with no excuse. But we have made it widely available in Virginia--we are one of three States to have done this--and it has had a tremendously positive benefit on folks' health.
So this is a relatively new vaccine. I mean, it started and got approval and began to be deployed significantly about 15 years ago; and even in 15 years, the results have been remarkable. And I want to just share with my colleagues and with the public some of the results between 15 and 20 years of the HPV cervical cancer vaccine. I will give you results from many countries and from many research institutions and hospitals to show you that this is not a question of significant medical controversy.
A publication that is one of the signature healthcare publications in England is called The Lancet, and there was an article in The Lancet in February of 2020, titled ``The Impact of HPV Vaccination and Cervical Screening on Cervical Cancer Elimination.'' This particular article summarized the study that looked at data from 78 countries. The researchers who examined this data were from England, China, France, Canada, and Switzerland.
Their research in analyzing the data of hundreds of thousands of patients in 78 countries concluded:
Fancy that--eliminating cancer with a vaccine. This was from the data from 78 countries.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, cdc.gov, has a section: the ``Impact of the HPV Vaccine'':
The American Society of Clinical Oncology, in 2024, published an article titled ``Effects of HPV vaccination on the development of HPV- related cancers.'' This is the American society for physicians who work in the clinical oncology area.
Here is the conclusion they reach:
Let's go to Scotland. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute in Scotland last year published a study titled ``Invasive Cervical Cancer Incidence following bivalent HPV vaccination,'' studying the healthcare results of people following vaccination. This was just published last year. Let me read you the quote:
Again, those first few words: ``No cases of invasive cancer were recorded in women'' who were vaccinated and studied in Scotland in this study that came out in 2024.
Another article in the Lancet looked not at 78 countries, but it looked at the effects of HPV vaccination programs in England. This article was published in 2021:
The elimination of cervical cancer, no cases of invasive cancer.
There was a study done in Australia in 2013 by BMC Medicine. The article was entitled ``Impact of a population-based HPV vaccination program on cervical abnormalities.'' This was still relatively early in the mass vaccination because Gardasil and any other HPV vaccinations weren't used until the mid-2000s--2007, 2008. Here is the conclusion reached about the Australians' experience:
The New England Journal of Medicine, which, in many ways, is the gold standard in the United States, published a study in 2020 about the effects of vaccination in Sweden:
All right, those are the studies by the researchers in the journals, but I also wondered--you know, I am not a great scientist. I don't generally read medical journals. But what about our healthcare institutions that are just in the business of providing health advice to everyday Americans who are seeking information about their health?
I went to the website of the Mayo Clinic. Here is what mayoclinic.org says:
They say on their website: ``Getting vaccinated against HPV helps prevent cancer in men and women''--period. No qualification, no waffling, no wobbling. That is the advice that the Mayo Clinic gives to its patients and to all who go to mayoclinic.org to seek health information.
The Cleveland Clinic, another internationally known healthcare provider, my.clevelandclinic.org in 2025, the website says as follows:
MD Anderson Hospital, another internationally known hospital based in Houston, TX--mdanderson.org. Here is what they say to their patients or others going to the website to seek advice:
All males and females--
So what I have just done is read you a variety of conclusions from a variety of researchers and healthcare providers, from a variety of countries, all pointing to the effectiveness of HPV vaccinations to prevent HPV infections that lead to cancers and other serious medical conditions.
But what does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., say? He has said that the vaccination is one of the most dangerous vaccines ever created. He has said that it is dangerous and defective.
On one of his website articles on his blog, he said:
The weight of medical evidence is that this is an effective tool to prevent cervical cancer. Robert F. Kennedy--with no medical training, with no scientific research background--claims otherwise. He cannot separate fact from fantasy, content from conspiracy.
Now, is that just because his brain doesn't wrap itself around facts, or is there something more serious? I needn't repeat at length what my colleague Senator Warren said, but she laid out the facts that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has a massive financial stake in lawsuits against the manufacturer of the HPV vaccine.
In fact, he disclosed it on his ethics form, that if there are recoveries against HPV manufacturers in lawsuits, he is entitled to 10 percent--10 percent--of the recovery in massive class-action lawsuits.
When we pressed him in the hearing, first he said he wasn't going to give up that 10-percent stake. But he eventually felt some pressure, and so he transferred it to his adult son. His family stands to gain significantly if these lawsuits hit.
As the Secretary of HHS, he would have the ability to have a huge influence on the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
Vaccine manufacturers get an immunity from civil suit until a case has gone through the vaccine compensation court. That was put in place many years ago because the number of vaccine manufacturers were in precipitous free fall. They were going out of business or stopping making vaccines because they were getting hit with big lawsuits. So there is a special court that focuses on any arguments against vaccines in these courts.
He would have significant ability to even remove immunity protection from the manufacturers of vaccines. And if you remove immunity protection, the value of lawsuits goes up, and the value of his family's 10 percent stake goes up.
This should cause everyone serious concern about putting someone in who stands, without any medical training, against the weight of medical evidence saying that vaccination against cervical cancer is a remarkable thing that should be done and that has been successful since the mid-2000s.
I am going to conclude in a minute because my able colleague from Colorado is here, but I want to raise one more issue. I want to raise one more issue.
This inability to tell the difference between fact and fiction and content and conspiracy would be dangerous enough if it was just about health information, if it was just about vaccines. That, in and of itself, should disqualify Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., from being the HHS Secretary. But this individual's inability to tell the difference between fact and fiction and between conspiracy and content is not limited just to health.
In July of 2024, when he was running for President of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy tweeted this:
``I won't take sides on 9/11''--I represent the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Pentagon was attacked on 9/11. The World Trade Center in New York
I asked Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Is this a common problem for you? I mean, that is kind of a candid thing to admit: ``It's hard to tell what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't.''
No, it is not. It is not hard for Virginians to understand what happened on 9/11. They lost loved ones. They went to funerals. Their family members never came home. And then, in the aftermath of 9/11, we were in 20 years of war, where tens of thousands of Virginians were deployed to battle against al-Qaida, the perpetrators of 9/11, and many lost their lives then.
``I won't take sides on 9/11''--well, like, what side is there? What side is he talking about?
I mean, it is a bad thing. Does he think it is a good thing? It was an attack by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. Does he think it was an inside job or something else?
And why would he even do this? This tweet is dated July 5, 2024. It was 23 years after 9/11--23 years after 9/11. For some reason, on July 5, he just says: Well, why don't I just share with people that I won't take sides on 9/11; that I still can't tell, 23 years later, what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't.
If you cannot tell what happened on 9/11, if you decide to just freelance an opinion 23 years later and tell the American public--and he was running for President at the time--I will not take sides on 9/ 11, you should not have been nominated for this position in the first place.
I am finding it very hard to believe that my colleagues in this body, whom I sat with on the Armed Services Committee, whom I sat with on the Foreign Relations Committee, who have invested their time and energy in making investments to battle terrorism around the world, to battle al- Qaida and other terrorist groups, the group that perpetrated the 9/11 attack--many of my colleagues served in the military and were deployed in the War on Terror in the aftermath of 9/11. They are now going to be OK with a guy who says he won't take sides on 9/11; who says he can't tell the difference between what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't?
This is a very, very dangerous vote that we will cast tomorrow. Of any position in the Federal Government that needs somebody who can tell the difference between fact and fiction, conspiracy and content, HHS Secretary is that position, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., so badly flunks the test of what is needed--careful, reasoned, information that people can count on--that I urge my colleagues, even if you voted in a committee, even if you voted on a procedural resolution to move this to the floor, stop now. You can still stop now. Don't hurt this country. Don't hurt the health of this country by putting someone in office who can't even understand what happened on 9/11.
Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the Presiding Officer to the U.S. Senate. I hadn't had a chance, really, to do that, as you sit in the chair.
We are now going to get somebody else, but I thank the Presiding Officer for being here.
(Mr. HUSTED assumed the Chair.)
I also want to thank my colleague from the Commonwealth of Virginia, Senator Kaine, for his heartfelt remarks.
I think we are through the looking glass in many ways, and there is a pattern here that is reflected in what you were talking about, this idea of being able to tell the difference between fact and fiction-- fact and fiction.
I know that when you were the mayor of Richmond, it was probably pretty important for people who were working with you to know the difference between fact and fiction. When you were the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, it probably was pretty important for you to do that as well.
It does seem like, in President Trump's administration, he is really at war with the facts and trying to muddle what is fact and fiction, to be kind about it.
I can't think of a time in the history of this country when families have wanted to know more about what is real and what is false--with their kids, what is real and what is false.
I was the superintendent of schools in Denver, as the Senator from Virginia knows, and it is a great irony that at a time when parents want their kids to be able to distinguish between what is real and what is false--because of all the falsehoods that are coming over social media and other places--the President has decided to nominate the head of the WWE to be the Secretary of Education in this administration.
You were talking about the inability of Bobby Kennedy to pick which side he was on when it came to what happened on 9/11. It reminds me exactly of the situation with Congresswoman Gabbard, who decided over and over and over again that she was going to choose not America's side but our adversaries' side, whether it was the chemical weapons in Syria--I mean, it is hard to even contemplate that--or the fact that at 12:30 at night, or I guess it was 11:30 at night, literally the night that Putin invaded Ukraine, a country that was at peace, a crossing of a peaceful border--the first time a tyrant had done that in Europe since World War II when the United States had led the international and global order that created these incredibly important institutions, NATO being one of those. And she had to reach out at 11:30 at night to basically mimic the talking points from Vladimir Putin. And I am not saying that she was a Russian spy or anything; I am just saying that it is the same stuff that he was using. Two days later, the Russian propaganda television in Moscow was running that stuff on the TV in Moscow.
So I think it really does matter that people are telling the truth to the American people and that, where possible, where there are differences of opinion, that we try to get to the bottom of the truth. There are a lot of reasons to have differences of opinion. We live in a democracy, and we have the freedom to have differences of opinion. We have the freedom to have a different understanding of the facts, but we need to be pretty certain about that when it comes to public health, when it comes to healthcare in this country.
Mr. President, we live in the richest country in the world. We are blessed to live in the richest country in the world. If you look at our national wealth as a function of our population, there is nobody who is remotely even close to us. That is the reflection of an economy that has been much more dynamic than economies across the world, innovation that is much more dynamic, and, I would say, a culture that is not beset by corruption in the way many countries around the world are.
But even though we are the richest country in the world and the richest per capita, shockingly, we have some of the worst health outcomes of any country that is wealthy. We have the lowest life expectancy among large, wealthy countries. We have the highest maternal mortality rate of any other high-income country in the world, and it is getting worse every single year. We have the highest hospitalization rates for chronic conditions--like congestive heart failure and diabetes and asthma--of all our peer countries.
We spend twice as much per capita as any other industrialized country for worse results. It is a bad deal for patients, and it is a terrible deal for taxpayers.
This isn't just about our physical health. We have the highest suicide rate among high-income countries. We have the second highest drug-related death rate among high-income countries.
We have some of the lowest numbers of mental health practitioners per capita in many parts of the country. In my own home State of Colorado, there are entire counties that really don't have any mental health expertise at all. And at a time when there is an epidemic in our country, I would say especially among young people, that is a shameful failure on our part.
Americans in every corner of our country are getting sicker in 2025.
The citizens of Colorado, I can tell you, are deeply, deeply unhappy with our healthcare system--deeply unhappy.
I will actually say I was here when we passed the Affordable Care Act during the Obama years, and it has not fixed the issues we are facing.
My constituents, when they think about healthcare, they think about scarcity; they think about the unavailability of drugs that their moms and dads have been prescribed but they either can't get or they can't afford even though they have been prescribed.
Unlike other countries around the world, this is a nation where our senior citizens actually spend their retirement going from pharmacy to pharmacy to pharmacy to get the drugs they have been prescribed by a doctor, to be able to get the inhaler that will keep them healthy so that they don't end up in the emergency room.
This is a country, unlike our competitors, where it is very common for moms and dads to spend 2 hours or 3 hours or 4 hours on the phone with an insurance company denying their claim--their legitimate claim-- for their kid.
This is a country, as I mentioned, where we do not have ready access to mental health care, which people living in other countries far less wealthy than we are have as a reasonable expectation of being a citizen of that country.
When we are in the midst of a physical and mental health care crisis like this, unlike many of the other Cabinet positions we are going to fill--and for some of them, it is true as well--the Secretary of Health and Human Services is a job of life and death. That is why Mr. Kennedy's confirmation, I think, would be so dangerous.
We are on the precipice of allowing a practiced trafficker of vaccine conspiracy theories--admitted, of these theories--to administer healthcare to over 29 million children in America who receive routine, lifesaving vaccines through Medicaid; a man who has made his fame and fortune by treating our most vulnerable children as his personal science experiment.
Mr. Kennedy has peddled bunk science that claims vaccines cause autism, sowing confusion and fear and causing heartbreak among parents who are now afraid to vaccinate their kids because they are so worried that it is going to cause autism--that they won't have a vaccine for their kid for fear of autism. But the failure to get that vaccine means their kids are exposed to profoundly important childhood and serious childhood illnesses.
He makes his claims with incredible conviction. He is not shy about it. He claimed that the measles vaccines ``poisoned an entire generation of children'' and went further to say that the ``only thing that cures measles is nutrition and clean water.''
Before the measles vaccine was developed in the 1960s, hundreds of American kids died every year, and measles is a completely preventable disease with two vaccines administered in childhood. Without it, measles can spread like wildfire, leaving behind serious complications like blindness and encephalitis. We don't know that. We don't remember that because the pages that are on this floor can't remember a time when we weren't having the measles vaccine in the United States of America. It would be a very different world if we hadn't had them, but we do.
Doctors in sub-Saharan Africa, where measles runs rampant, describe watching children die from this preventable disease in their dire warnings they are now sending to the United States.
The CDC warns that kindergarten MMR vaccine rates have dropped below the 95-percent threshold needed to prevent worldwide measles outbreaks.
As I stand here tonight, as the Presiding Officer sits here tonight, five States have reported measles cases. An outbreak in Gaines County, TX, has rapidly grown to 24 reported cases, all of them unvaccinated children. Nine are in the hospital. Nine of these children are in the hospital. Vaccine exemptions in Gaines County are among the highest in the State of Texas. Mr. President, 17.5 percent of Gaines County kindergartners have vaccine exemptions. That is almost 20 percent.
It is not just Mr. Kennedy's vaccine conspiracies that are of grave concern, however. He has spent 50 years muddying the waters of scientific consensus with half-truths and misinformation and bad science.
In his hearing before the Finance Committee, Mr. Kennedy showed an alarming inability to answer simple questions about his past statements. He appeared to have selective memory regarding some of his most outlandish claims.
I asked him point-blank about his claims that COVID-19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon--these are his words: genetically engineered bioweapon--that targets Black and White people but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. He never denied this. He never denied that he said it and instead pointed to a debunked theory study as flimsy proof of his claims.
I asked him further, based on what he had said--again, quoting him:
To this he answered:
``I probably did'' say that Lyme disease was a militarily engineered bioweapon. How can we consider someone for the highest health office in the country who believes that America's own military engineered Lyme disease and uses it as a weapon against us? What could go wrong?
He said on his podcast that exposure to pesticides could cause children to become transgender--a statement he claims not to remember, but he said it. It is on the record.
He insisted he forgot writing in his own book that ``it's undeniable that African AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS'' and could provide no explanation for this false statement either.
Mr. Kennedy likes to talk about the need for more research. In fact, that was his answer to many of my colleagues' questions. He even told me to look at an NIH study when I asked him about some of his unfounded claims about COVID-19.
Now, the NIH, as you know, is under attack tonight as we are here, and all Mr. Kennedy has to say about that is that he will look into that.
The NIH is the gold standard worldwide for scientific research and innovation. The University of Colorado is telling me that the system could lose $85 million a year in research dollars to study Alzheimer's, brain injuries, mental illness, and heart disease. If confirmed, Mr. Kennedy would oversee NIH.
I guess I really think that we could do better than a known peddler of junk science to run the most important medical research in the country.
Is a vaccine denier the best we can do for our doctors who are working around the clock and our nurses, too, in the midst of the worst flu outbreak in 15 years? Is a man who became a millionaire many times over by claiming vaccines cause autism the best we really can do for our kids?
Do we really want parents making a choice that is unsafe for them and for their communities because people at the highest offices in the country are making false statements about science? Out of 330 million Americans, we can surely do better than this.
I appreciate the Presiding Officer's patience.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. President, I rise today because there is nothing-- nothing--that keeps a parent up at night like the health of their child. It doesn't matter if you are a Democrat or a Republican, if you live in the reddest rural areas or the bluest cities. One of the things that binds us as Americans, as people, is that every parent looks at their kids and wants to know that they are doing everything that they can to keep them safe.
And let me tell you, that is not an easy task. I am a father of a 7- year-old and a 9-year-old, two little boys, and I every day wonder, am I doing the right thing for them? Am I being the kind of father that they deserve? Am I looking out and being thoughtful about what they eat, about whether or not I am keeping up with their health, and that they are exercising?
And like most families, I can tell you it is tough to know that you are always doing the best thing for your kids. But like most families, we do what we can.
I mean, how many parents out there, when your kid gets sick and it is too late in the night to find a way to call the doctor or the nurse, you are trying to figure out where to turn to for information?
Where do we go when it is that we feel like we have reached the limits of our own personal knowledge and we need to find a place that we can trust? And that is what this is about. It is about knowing that there is someone you can trust when you feel like you don't know where else to turn, that someone can have your back and you can trust that they have your best interests at heart.
When we think about our doctors, when we think about our nurses, our health professionals, when we think about those making decisions in this great Nation of over 330 million people about our healthcare, we want to trust those individuals, these people that are making these decisions.
And I know for the people in New Jersey, over 9 million people there in the State of New Jersey, they are wondering who they can trust. We live in tough times. In fact, we live in the time of the greatest amount of distrust that we have ever seen in modern history of this country.
And that is most pronounced, most clear when it comes to our health. And one of those people we need to trust the most in our country is the person who runs the Department of Health and Human Services.
I rise today because I have met with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I have questioned Mr. Kennedy in committee. I have read his statements and examined his record, and I want to say here on the floor of the Senate that he is not someone I can trust with my kids' health. And in good conscience, I cannot vote for him.
If I cannot trust him with the health of my own kids, how can I ask the families of 9 million other New Jerseyans to go do it or for families across our country to trust this man?
I have had the chance to be able to meet him, talk to him in person, ask him questions, that is more than most anyone in my own State is going to have a chance to talk to him. I took that as a deep responsibility to try to use that time and that opportunity to try to deduce whether or not this man rises to the level of trust that I think the people of New Jersey and this country deserve.
And I have come to the conclusion that I cannot support Mr. Kennedy to lead an Agency in charge of our Nation's health. And he has too often diminished that trust in the very healthcare that he would be in charge of and too often has spread disinformation about the diseases and challenges and threats that we face.
Now, what you will hear from his supporters is a story of an advocate for change. They will tell you that he is fighting against a broken system, that he simply wants to make America healthy. And, look, I think all of us, hopefully, can say that we want to make America healthy, that we care about the health of Americans across this Nation.
And I don't think anyone in this Chamber would disagree that there are broken problems that we face when it comes to our healthcare, to our government, to so many aspects of our society.
But, unfortunately, like most things coming out of this current administration, what we are seeing is corruption and conspiracy disguised as false promises of change. It is important that we take this moment to call it out and to expose it, to explain to the American people why this is a position--the Secretary of Health and Human Services is a position where trust is so important.
Because if he is confirmed, Mr. Kennedy will have an incredible platform, well beyond the strong platform that he already has developed--a bully pulpit. But this would be an official platform of the United States, of our government, paid for by the taxpayers, to shape the health of my children and yours.
Let's begin with the Agency he is nominated to lead. HHS employs more than 80,000 people across the United States and around the world. Their mission is simple: to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans. And to put that another way, their job is to make it easier for parents to sleep at night by making sure their kids can stay healthy.
Now, I am not going to go over every single one of the 13 operating divisions of HHS, but let me name a few you have probably heard of. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they are on the frontlines of preventing the next pandemic; the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, they operate Medicare, Medicaid; the Children's Health Insurance Program, otherwise known as CHIP; and the Health Insurance Marketplaces. All of these provide healthcare for more than 100 million Americans, including my mother and my father who are under Medicare. That is about one in three people under the services of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Then there is the Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA. You probably know them because when there is some sort of outbreak that impacts the food supply, they issue the recalls. But they do a lot of other stuff, too, from approving new medicines to countering bioterrorism.
Now, those are three of the divisions you have heard of. Maybe you haven't heard of the National Institutes of Health, an Agency that sits at the cutting edge of medical research--not just in the Nation but around the world. Or the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an Agency that does work to combat the real addiction and mental health crisis our country is facing.
The Lakewood Community Service Corporation, Lakewood, NJ, received a $2.5 million grant to improve mental health care in one of our State's fastest growing services. Cape May County Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse received a $300,000 grant to tackle substance abuse issues in South Jersey, both important causes that my colleagues from both sides of the aisle can agree to support.
And then, finally, there is the Administration for Children and Families, and whether you heard of it or not, you or someone you know probably is touched by it. It is the second largest Agency in HHS, and it is the Agency that manages temporary assistance for needy families: Head Start, childcare and foster care programs.
I wanted to outline all of this because I want you to understand the enormity of the task ahead of the next HHS Secretary. This is not just someone who can walk in and just say: We need to be healthy again. This is someone who will be tasked with operating programs on a day-to-day basis that mean the very life and death of over a third of all Americans.
So when I say that trust is important, it is not just a buzzword. Who do you trust with your health? Who do you trust with your children's health? Who do you trust with your parents' health, as they age and face challenges of physical and cognitive decline?
Let's look at some of the things that show why we should not trust Mr. Kennedy. One of the first things that many parents have to deal with--vaccines. A lot of us have had to hold our kids through those vaccines. We talk to our pediatricians--people we trust--and they talk to us about the importance of making sure that our kids are protected.
Mr. Kennedy has used his stature to push lawsuits that he personally stands to profit from--including over a common vaccine given to children. And throughout all of this, Mr. Kennedy has claimed that he is ``not anti-vaccine.'' While it is clear that we cannot trust him, what is even more clear is that his deception has had a real impact on the lives of people.
Mr. Kennedy's push to sow distrust in Samoa in 2019 helped lead to a measles epidemic that claimed the lives of 83 people, mostly children under the age of 5. While Kennedy said in his hearing that ``We don't know what was killing them,'' the Samoan Director-General of Health, Dr. Alec Ekeroma, called his words ``a total fabrication.''
The doctor said that if Mr. Kennedy is confirmed, he would be ``a danger to us, a danger to everyone.''
That is not someone we can trust.
In a speech on the Senate floor in the 1960s, then-Senator John F. Kennedy, said that ``the treatment of its older citizens is said by anthropologists to be one of the most basic tests of how civilized a society or nation has become.''
I would broaden that test to be our most vulnerable, our neighbors who are
And when Mr. Kennedy spreads false claims like the COVID-19 virus was engineered to spare Jewish Americans and Asians, he uses the trust that he has been given to divide and spread anti-Semitism and anti-Asian hate.
And when Mr. Kennedy, in response to the questions asked of him by Members of this body, refused to acknowledge the importance of taking commonsense steps in our foster care system to protect trans youth, he uses the trust he has been given to divide and spread hate and fear. That is not someone we can trust.
My reasons for opposing Mr. Kennedy's nomination don't just come from the concerns I have for my children; it comes from an understanding I have from my parents.
A little over 50 years ago, my parents came to America from South Korea to start a better life. They did so by working to keep Americans healthy. My father earned his Ph.D. and became a genetic researcher trying to cure cancer and Alzheimer's. My mother worked as a nurse in hospital systems across New Jersey.
They worked hard to earn the trust of people around them, their colleagues, their patients that they had worked on every single day, but also the trust that they had in the people around them for their own health.
My father was a polio survivor; my mother struggled with Lyme disease. They have had their fair share of health struggles. And through them, I have seen a common denominator that our public health system only works when we have people working together with trust and that we the public, in turn, trust them.
But then when I hear Mr. Kennedy say this about Lyme disease. He said:
According to a Washington Post article written by a Professor Sam Telford, ``It's an old conspiracy theory enjoying a resurgence with lots of sensational headlines and tweets. Even Congress has ordered that the Pentagon must reveal whether it weaponized ticks. And it's not true.''
When it came to the disease of polio that disabled my father since he was a baby, Mr. Kennedy had this to say about the vaccine that nearly eradicated polio from the face of the planet. He said the vaccine, for a period of time, may have led to cancer due to a contamination with a virus that ``killed many many many many many more people than polio ever did.''
So with the polio vaccine he said: ``Did it cause more deaths than it averted? I would say, I don't know.''
And he said this just a year and a half ago.
A large study was published that concluded that the polio vaccine under concern was not associated with increased rates of cancer, and other studies showed that the virus of concern was killed by the same process used to inactivate the polio virus.
And in that same podcast, Mr. Kennedy said:
Again, this was just a year and a half ago. Now he is coming to us and saying: I am all for the polio vaccine.
What are the American people left to believe?
Again, our health and our Nation is founded on trust. That is part of the compact we have as Americans for generations. We want trust for our families.
As I said, I am a father of two little boys. All I want for them is to be healthy and happy. They are the reason that I am here in the U.S. Senate, to take actions to be able to give them the best type of lives, to give other kids and other grandkids the kind of lives they deserve.
And I worry about the foods that they eat, and I support efforts to address ultraprocessed foods in America, to try to make sure we can have Americans eating healthy. But I also want someone who is not going to shoot from the hip and spread disinformation.
Our healthcare is far from perfect, and we do need major reforms to get it in a place where it can better serve the American people. We do need massive changes in the way our healthcare, childcare, elder care, and nutrition systems are run, but not without trust.
We need research--more and more research--to understand safety and to power the innovation that will come up with the cures and the medicines of the future. But, this week, we see efforts to undertake massive cuts at NIH, cuts that would set back the very research we need to keep improving our health.
As I conclude here, these efforts to cut and slash our research at NIH and elsewhere would continue under the leadership of Mr. Kennedy. HHS Secretary is a big job. We can't just hand it to someone we can't trust--not for my kids or for my parents or for yours.
I encourage my colleagues, again: Reject this nomination so that every parent in America can go to sleep having trust in a person tasked with ensuring that our children will be healthy in the morning.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, the postcloture time with respect to the Kennedy nomination expire at 10:30 a.m., Thursday, February 13. I further ask that, following disposition of the Kennedy nomination, the cloture motion with respect to the Rollins nomination be withdrawn and the Senate vote on confirmation of the Rollins nomination with no intervening action or debate; further, that following disposition of the Rollins nomination, the Senate resume consideration of the Lutnick nomination, and the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Lutnick nomination at 1:45 p.m.; and if cloture is invoked on the Lutnick nomination, that all time be considered expired, and the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Loeffler nomination; and if cloture is invoked on the Loeffler nomination, that all postcloture time be expired, and the Senate vote on confirmation of the Loeffler and Lutnick nominations at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Democratic leader no earlier than Tuesday, February 18.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session for a period of morning business for debate only, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions has adopted rules governing its procedures for the 119th Congress. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying rules for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
GUIDELINES OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS WITH RESPECT TO HEARINGS, MARKUP SESSIONS. AND RELATED MATTERS
Mr. President, the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship today adopted rules governing its procedures for the 119th Congress. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying rules adopted by the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee
Mr. President, I have seven requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.
Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:
The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 11 a.m., to consider a nomination.
The Committee on Indian Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct an oversight hearing.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.
The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Special Committee on Aging is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 3:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following fellows in my office be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the 1st session of the 119th Congress: Mary Fernandes, Sarah Goldman, Adam Hasz, and Alyssa Rudelis.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 32 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bill (S. 32) was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed as follows:
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, February 13; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to executive session to resume Executive Calendar No. 17 under the previous order; finally, that if any nominations are confirmed during Thursday's session, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, on the eve of the vote for the nominee for the Department of Health and Human Services, I stand before you acknowledging that I will vote no on the confirmation of Mr. Robert F. Kennedy.
I stand before you tonight after looking at his abilities, his background and qualifications, and his character. For me, I listened to my constituents and the calls that we have received into our office. And I have read articles. I have looked at petitions and lawsuits. I have listened to podcasts, and even watched a video that he produced.
There were inconsistencies in his positions, and so that is one reason that I could say no to this candidate.
Even as the former deputy secretary of health and social services from Delaware, I thought about the potential for another pandemic in our country and would he be ready for the job?
I thought about the fact that I come from a State that is also an agriculture State, and we are right now dealing with issues and concerns and fears about avian flu. Would he be ready for the job?
I have thought about senior citizens in my State who are on Medicare and children with special needs who may be on Medicaid, and the fact that in our hearing and also in my one-on-one conversation with him, he confused the two. Even within a week's time, he did not learn the differences between the two.
That was concerning enough, but tonight, in the time that I have, I want to also say I stand here as a grandmother, and I think about my granddaughter Lennox and her ability to, No. 1, be safe in school, because she is vaccinated, and she is with other children who are vaccinated and no longer have to worry about things like polio. I think about her ability to have reproductive freedom over her own life, when Mr. Kennedy has changed his positions so many times on where he stands on reproductive freedom and the right for her to choose what she wants for her life.
But I think one of the most troubling things that took place during our meeting was that he was not familiar with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, EMTALA, while we literally have a crisis in maternal mortality. It is important to me that the person who holds this job understands those basic things--Medicare, Medicaid, EMTALA-- and that we face a challenge for women's lives being saved.
I asked him specifically if he agreed about making sure that, if someone was having complications during their pregnancy, that they should get the care that they need. This is both something that is being experienced across the country, but it is also personal for me.
A few years ago, after my son and daughter-in-law went through so much to get pregnant through IVF, on Christmas morning, I remember beginning to make the family dinner, and I got a call from my daughter- in-law saying: Mom, something is wrong. My water broke.
She was only about 5, 6 months pregnant--about 5 months pregnant. And she went to a hospital. And I got to that hospital, and because I knew, from my former jobs, of the statistics, particularly for Black women and maternal deaths--I saw her sitting in a wheelchair in the waiting room not being attended. The hospital ended up telling her she needed to go home and just basically wait it out.
For that whole month afterward, my son and my daughter-in-law stayed in my house. They slept in my bed. We supported each other.
But because of the miracle of IVF, they were able to conceive again, and 2 years ago this weekend, I became a grandmother of my granddaughter Lennox.
Tonight, I stand here on behalf of the children who want and need to be healthy. I stand here on behalf of the women across the country who need to know that there is a Cabinet Secretary who understands the need for emergency care, who understands the rights of women to make choices with their doctors and their families, and, if they have a pastor or a rabbi, with their rabbi and their pastor.
As someone who has focused much of my career on health and social services and dealing with health disparities, it is important that we do better as a country with our health status and that we are healthier.
But I go back to the beginning. Does the candidate have the qualifications, the background, the character, and the ability? For this candidate, unfortunately, the answer is no.
And tonight, I stand here for all of the children of our country, all of the families of our country, and I will be voting no on this nomination.
Mr. President, I am joining my Democratic colleagues on the Senate floor today because we have pledged to Americans that we will always stand up and fight for affordable, quality healthcare.
Right now, Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress are trying to dismantle healthcare access for Nevadans and Americans across the country. As we speak, Republicans are working out a way to pass their budget through Congress and slash Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for Trump's ultrawealthy friends. Their budget for these billionaire tax cuts was just released this morning, and they want to give away trillions of dollars to the richest Americans and add about $3 trillion to our national debt in exchange for nearly $1 trillion in healthcare cuts for working families. You can bet Medicaid will be one of their biggest targets.
It is absolutely outrageous, and it is important that we shine a light for the American public so they know what is going on.
Right now, the Senate is considering the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services--who has made it clear that he will be a rubberstamp for Donald Trump even if it hurts Nevadans.
This isn't fearmongering or speaking in hypotheticals. Donald Trump has been coming after critical healthcare since his first term in office. Every annual budget proposal Trump had in his first term, from 2017 through 2020, included huge cuts to Medicaid. And when Republicans in Congress tried to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President Trump was on board with every plan they came up with that slashed Medicaid in the process.
I will tell you what: Democrats stood up to him every time.
But even after multiple failed attempts, it doesn't seem like President Trump has learned that Americans don't want him to roll back Medicaid.
His Project 2025 manifesto calls for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to impose lifetime caps on Medicaid. What does that mean? That means a person can only receive Medicaid benefits for a limited period of time no matter their income or their healthcare needs. That would leave about 92,800 Nevadans who are low-income and depend on Medicaid for healthcare at risk of losing their coverage.
We know RFK, Jr., will just let this happen if he becomes the Secretary of Health and Human Services. HHS oversees the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which means Mr. Kennedy would have control over what happens with these essential healthcare programs.
What is ironic is that Mr. Kennedy doesn't seem to even know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. He confused the two multiple times during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.
Also during that hearing, he made it very clear to me and he made it very clear to the general public who was watching that he would refuse to even tell me he wouldn't be a rubberstamp for this administration, that he could have an independent thought and fight any harm that would occur to Nevadans or across this country; he would stand up with them. He made it very
I cannot support someone who would let Donald Trump give his billionaire friends tax cuts at the expense of Nevadans' healthcare.
I know some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have argued that their plan to cut Medicaid is about getting rid of waste and fraud. Listen, I am all for reducing government waste and fraud and streamlining our bureaucracy.
I will tell you, I served for 8 years as the attorney general in the State of Nevada, and during that period of time, the Medicaid Fraud Unit was in my office. We prosecuted and we went after individuals, and we held people accountable for that waste and fraud in the Medicaid Program. So I am all about addressing waste and fraud. In fact, I know that my Democratic colleagues and I have offered to work in a bipartisan way to cut wasteful spending.
Instead, however, Trump and Republican leadership want to gut Medicaid, which millions of Americans depend on to access healthcare. It is just wrong. But let me talk about why. Let me tell you a little bit about the history of this.
Medicaid was created in 1965 as a way for the Federal and State governments to provide healthcare coverage to low-income people who need it. That includes children, pregnant women, seniors, people with disabilities, and adults across the United States. It helps veterans, new moms and their babies, rural hospitals, primary care providers, mental health care workers, and more.
As of June 2024, 788,481 Nevadans were enrolled in Medicaid and its initiatives, like the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. Nearly 800,000 people in Nevada--and that is just Nevada--depend on Medicaid to keep themselves and their families healthy. This includes one in six adults, three out of eight children, four in seven nursing home residents, and one-third of people with disabilities. Forty-three percent of our births are covered by Medicaid.
But here is the deal: Sixty-six percent of adults in Nevada who benefit from Medicaid work for a living.
I cannot say enough about this program and its impact in my State and how important it is. People over the age of 65 and disabled rely on Medicaid for their long-term care, and people with disabilities rely on Medicaid for their long-term care.
Let me say that there are seniors who helped build this country and make America what it is today. They worked hard, they raised their families, and they contributed to our economy. Some are veterans of our Armed Forces. Now in their senior years, they have chronic illnesses, and they aren't able to move around the house like they used to. They cannot take care of themselves alone. That is what Medicaid is for.
In Nevada, 17,600 Medicaid enrollees used home- and community-based services and long-term services to support themselves. That means nursing facility care, adult daycare programs, home health aide services, personal care services, transportation, and supported employment.
It is a common misconception that Medicare and private insurance covers long-term nursing facility care or home care. They just don't. That is Medicaid. That is what Donald Trump and Republican leadership and RFK, Jr., want to cut to thank our seniors for everything they have done for our country. They want to roll back the healthcare benefits that are giving them the dignity they deserve in their retirement.
But that is not all. Medicaid also supports low-income children and working families, including pregnant women and children with disabilities. Nearly 40 percent of all children in Nevada are covered by Medicaid and CHIP. This is a crucial program for Nevada's kids in making sure that they get their annual checkups, vaccines, hospital emergency care, dental and vision care, and the medications they need. All of this--all of this--is key to ensuring that our kids grow and that they develop at a healthy rate.
Medicaid also covers more than 40 percent of all births in Nevada. In 2023, that was 13,206 babies and their mothers who had access to essential healthcare that they wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise. These are the children, babies, mothers who are now being targeted by Donald Trump so he can pay for tax cuts for the ultrarich.
Another key component of Medicaid coverage includes people with mental health challenges and substance use disorders. Nevada Medicaid provides screening and early intervention, outpatient and community services, crisis and emergency response, and residential and inpatient treatment to children and adults.
I know we have a mental health crisis and a drug epidemic in this country. I see it. I hear about it from Nevadans every single day. I think both Democrats and Republicans agree that we are just not dedicating enough resources towards Americans' mental health.
When there is a shooting at a school or place of worship or a music festival, the first thing I hear is that we need to invest more in mental health. And families in both red and blue States are being torn apart by fentanyl and other dangerous drugs.
So why do my Republican colleagues want to do Donald Trump's bidding and slash Medicaid, making this crisis even worse? They are working right now to pass a budget through Congress that guts these critical programs. And they want to confirm Mr. Kennedy, who we know is going to go along with every one of Trump's plans.
If they succeed, what is going to happen to Nevada's working families, our seniors, our veterans, and our children? What will happen to them if Medicaid is slashed? Well, let me just tell you what is going to happen.
In Nevada, we rely on Federal funding for the vast majority of our Medicaid Program. Without it, policymakers in my State will be forced to cut coverage and leave hundreds of thousands of Nevadans uninsured, without access to affordable, quality healthcare. I said it before. Nearly 800,000 Nevadans who have Medicaid now will be in danger of being kicked off their health insurance, and 17,600 seniors and disabled people in Nevada will be at risk of losing their coverage, leaving even more families with nowhere to turn to take care of their elderly loved ones.
When Nevadans lose their coverage, the already-expensive cost of healthcare shoots up. Nevada Health Link has a list of costs for people without health insurance. Let me tell you what that looks like now if they were no longer to have the benefit of Medicaid.
Mammograms will cost $212 now. Brain MRIs have a copay of $20 to $100 with insurance, but it will become $1,000 to $5,000 without insurance. A visit to the emergency room will cost Nevadans who are insured a $50 to a $150 copay, but Nevadans who don't have insurance could pay as much as $3,000. A baby's visit to the doctor for a wellness checkup costs $10 to $30 if they have insurance, but without insurance, it costs about $95 per visit.
These are the kinds of costs the average Nevada family cannot afford to pay, but Donald Trump is threatening to make this a reality.
If Donald Trump cuts health insurance in Nevada, even more healthcare providers may be forced to close up shop because their patients can't pay for their care.
Let me just stress this even more: Nevada's rural hospitals rely heavily on Medicaid. If Medicaid is cut, these hospitals that are already understaffed and overwhelmed would have to reduce their services, if not shut down entirely.
Now, that is not unique to Nevada. Every rural community that relies on Medicaid is going to have the same problem. If you know our rural communities, you know that very rarely is there access to healthcare in a rural community, and when those providers are there, that is the place for our rural Americans to go. Sometimes they have to drive, in my State, 2 to 3 to 4 hours just to get access to healthcare. If we take away those areas and the locations for healthcare in our rural communities, that will devastate rural Americans.
The reality is, in Nevada, we just don't have enough providers in our Medicaid Program. It is one thing to have a clinic open that door; it is another to have a hospital be able to open those doors to communities. But if you
I will say my State is working to build out networks and encourage providers to come to Nevada, but we can't do it without critical funding from Medicaid. If Donald Trump cuts Medicaid, one of the first things my State will have to do is cut payment rates for healthcare providers, which will make our shortage of providers even worse, and it will disincentivize providers coming to live and work in Nevada. The ripple effect it will have on my State's economy will be disastrous. We just can't let this happen. This is going to affect Americans in every State across the country.
We have to come together as a Congress and protect our working families from Donald Trump's billionaire tax cuts, and that includes voting no on RFK, Jr., whom Trump handpicked to lead HHS because he knew Mr. Kennedy wouldn't do a thing to stop him.
With RFK running our Department of Health and Human Services, it is not just Medicaid that is in danger; Trump also wants to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. As we all may remember, he has concepts of a plan to do just that, but let's talk about what that means.
Before the ACA, if you were an adult with no dependents, even if you were low-income, you had no access to Medicaid. Unless your employer provided health insurance, you had none. Now, thanks to the ACA, more people than ever before can get the healthcare they need. Over the last 11 years, that has amounted to 20 million low-income adults enrolling in affordable, quality healthcare coverage through Medicaid. This has been a huge gift to our economy.
Think of it this way: If you were an adult who had a chronic illness that kept you from working, you didn't used to have access to health insurance, but because of the ACA, you can now get the care and treatment you need and get back into the workforce.
The ACA has helped Medicaid support our workers to boost our healthcare workforce, and it has made us a stronger and healthier nation. But, once again, Donald Trump wants to roll this expansion of Medicaid back and strip healthcare from thousands of Nevadans so he can pay for tax cuts for his elite, billionaire friends.
Well, I don't know about my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but I have no interest in cutting taxes for the ultrawealthy when we should be cutting taxes for working families. Here is how we can do that: Part of the Affordable Care Act provided tax credits for low-income Nevadans to make their healthcare premiums cheaper and help them afford their insurance. When we passed the bipartisan American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act, we made those tax credits available to even more people, especially to those who had been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. But now those tax credits for hard- working families are set to expire at the end of this year.
This would be devastating to Nevada families and small businesses, as 11,000 Nevadans would lose their healthcare coverage. Nevadans who have benefited from these tax credits would see their healthcare premiums go up by $2,000 a year, on average, and 250,606 small businesses and self- employed workers in Nevada who qualified for these tax credits will see their premiums increase.
I will tell you what: My Republican colleagues in the majority now have a decision to make. Instead of letting these tax credits for working families and small businesses expire and throwing thousands of lives into chaos, they could renew them. It should be simple. Let's come together and prioritize hard-working families and small businesses over billionaires. That is what we were elected to do, and it is what the American people expect of us.
We cannot give our country over to the elite--to the wealthiest people like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.--who will do whatever President Trump wants him to do to our healthcare system.
My Democratic colleagues and I stand here today and every day ready to continue pushing back against Donald Trump's attacks on Americans' healthcare. Trump can say whatever he wants about not touching Medicaid and making America healthy, but the truth is that he will do whatever it takes to lift up his elite, billionaire friends and then tell you it is for your own good. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will be just a rubberstamp for that agenda. Because of that, I will be voting no on his confirmation.
Mr. President, unfortunately and sadly, we are witnessing an alarming abdication of duty from Republicans here in the Senate. The job of the Senate when it comes to nominees is very simple: When a nominee is obviously qualified and experienced, we should consider them seriously even if we don't agree with their political views or ultimately vote for them. But when a nominee comes before the Senate who is obviously unqualified, who is obviously fringe, whose views are obviously detrimental to the well-being of the American people, well, Senators have a duty to reject them and to tell the President to send someone better.
We were faced with one such nominee earlier today in Tulsi Gabbard, and now we are faced with another such nominee right now.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is not remotely qualified to become the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. In fact, I might go further. Robert F. Kennedy might be one of the least qualified people the President could have chosen for the job. It is almost as if Mr. Kennedy's beliefs, history, and background were tailor-made to be the exact opposite of what the job demands.
A few weeks ago, it seemed like maybe Senate Republicans would have drawn the line on nominees like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, but the past few days have been a stunning capitulation by Senate Republicans. At this point, they are just rubberstamping people no matter how fringe they are.
If the Senate had a secret ballot, I will bet you that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., would never have come close to confirmation. His unfitness for the job is simply too obvious and too glaring.
HHS is an Agency that depends on science, on evidence, and on impartiality to ensure the well-being of over 330 million Americans. HHS ensures we eat safe food, purchase reliable medications, oversees Medicare benefits, and approves the use of lifesaving vaccines. Most importantly, a good HHS Secretary makes sure the American people have access to affordable, high-quality healthcare.
Mr. Kennedy, unfortunately, is not qualified to oversee any of these things. He is neither a doctor nor a scientist nor a public health expert nor a policy expert of any kind.
If Mr. Kennedy is confirmed given that lack of background, it is my deep fear that he will rubberstamp Donald Trump's war against healthcare, meaning we will see more of the disastrous funding cuts of the past few weeks, meaning that more people will lose health coverage, meaning that the interests of for-profit corporations and Big Pharma will come before the needs of working Americans.
When I saw Mr. Kennedy and asked him certain views, like on abortion, he said: Well, I am going to defer to the President.
On something as personal, as heartfelt, as talked over within ourselves, even, as abortion, he will follow the whims and the wishes of the President? Well, then, how do we know he won't do it on everything else? Even in the places where he might try to tell someone in an interview that he is different than the President, how do we know he won't just follow the President given that he said that on one of the most fundamental views a person can hold?
I am so troubled by this nomination. Already, as we have seen, community health centers across the country have been locked out of the funding they need to serve patients, and I fear it will get worse under RFK, Jr.'s watch. Already, the CDC has gutted valuable public health care data from its websites before the courts stepped in. As we speak, DOGE has basically hacked into the payment data of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which tens of millions of people rely on for secure benefits. I fear all
Now, it would be bad enough that a vote to confirm RFK, Jr., would be a vote to weaken America's healthcare system, but it gets even worse when you remember that a vote for RFK, Jr., is also a vote to elevate a conspiracy theorist to the top healthcare job in the country.
Mr. Kennedy has made a living not by promoting public health but, in his later years, by actively fighting it. RFK is the face of the modern anti-vax movement. He has spent decades profiting off vaccine misinformation, undermining public trust in a medical practice that has saved tens of millions of lives, if not hundreds of millions or more, for more than a century.
We need to take a moment to truly reckon with the dangers of putting a vaccine skeptic in charge of HHS.
Simply put, weakening vaccine standards could mean more people will die--more people will die. A vaccine skeptic in charge of HHS could defund vaccine awareness campaigns that are led by organizations like the CDC. A vaccine skeptic in charge of HHS could reshape the CDC's vaccine advisory board and alter which kinds of vaccines are required to be covered by insurance companies.
A vaccine skeptic in charge of HHS would make our schools less safe. If fewer kids are required to be vaccinated against things like measles, the results will be sicker classrooms across America.
A vaccine skeptic in charge of HHS could weaken protections for vaccine and drugmakers from frivolous lawsuits.
These are just some of the dangers that come with putting a vaccine skeptic in charge of America's healthcare policy. It will set American healthcare back dramatically.
Of course, during his hearings, RFK, Jr., tried to run away from his fringe views. We heard the usual excuses you might expect from a nominee forced to answer for a terrible record. He suggested perhaps he was misquoted here and there or that he had been misunderstood or that he never meant to come across as anti-vaccine at all, and that, of course, he would follow the science. Well, give me a break. Are Senators supposed to believe that someone who has spent decades writing books and giving speeches and making trips around the world undermining vaccines has suddenly had this epiphany and come around on vaccines; that, suddenly, now that he has been nominated to lead HHS, he is fully on board with vaccines, and that we have nothing to worry about when it comes to his views? How convenient. Again, give me a break.
We should look less at RFK, Jr.'s eleventh-hour conversion and, instead, examine the things he has said again and again, going back decades. We should look at the way RFK, Jr., has used his powerful platform to spread misinformation for years, like in 2023--not very long ago--when Mr. Kennedy went on FOX News and said:
Or when Mr. Kennedy gave his speech at a conference linking the CDC vaccines division to ``fascism.''
Or like in 2021, when he said on a podcast:
And, of course, you could try reading Mr. Kennedy's numerous books against vaccines, like the one claiming parents have been misled on the measles vaccine. Or you could go to the online store of one of his anti-vaccine groups and check out the merchandise they sell for kids, like the onesie that says ``Unvaxxed and Unafraid''--a onesie for a little one, putting this propaganda on him or her.
This last example is pretty revealing because it is not just that Mr. Kennedy embraces pseudoscience and conspiracy theories but that he has, in fact, profited off spreading misinformation. He has been involved with no fewer than five lawsuits filed by anti-vaccine groups against drug companies. In fact, his primary source of income from the last year came from the fees he collected by referring clients to a civil lawsuit against vaccines.
And, by the way, he didn't originally disclose those connections to ethics officials. Worse, he refused to give up his financial stake in any settlement agreement that comes from one of these lawsuits. That is stunning.
That means, right now, Republicans are on the brink of confirming a nominee to HHS who will be in charge of vaccine regulations in America and who at the same time stands to benefit from lawsuits against vaccines, financially benefit.
Well, Donald Trump says he wants to get rid of the swamp. This is a textbook definition of ``the swamp''--to benefit from lawsuits against vaccines while you are HHS Secretary and have power over which vaccines are needed and how they are distributed and talked about to the American people.
Now, let me repeat what I said a few weeks earlier. It fills me with such sadness, as well as a great deal of frustration and even anger. A few weeks ago, it seemed like Senate Republicans would have drawn the line on nominees like Robert Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard. A few weeks ago, yes, indeed, it did seem like Senate Republicans, maybe, would have drawn the line on RF Kennedy, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard. But, unfortunately, and, again, sadly, the past few days have been a stunning capitulation by Senate Republicans.
If the Senate had a secret ballot, I will bet you that Tulsi Gabbard would have gotten fewer than 10 votes and Robert Kennedy would not have come close to confirmation. My guess is a majority of the party on the other side would have voted against him as well, as are all of us.
But, instead, Donald Trump is tightening his vice grip even further on Senate Republicans. What we are witnessing is leadership from one branch of government, withering under pressure from another, even to the point of confirming dangerously unfit individuals to positions of immense responsibility.
My Republican colleagues should think very carefully before they roll the dice on Mr. Kennedy. There is a very serious risk that, if confirmed, Mr. Kennedy will take steps that severely undermine public health, and then sooner or later public backlash is going to build, and Republicans will have wished they didn't sign their names to this troubling nominee.
So I implore my Republican colleagues, reject the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy to be Secretary of HHS. There are certainly better individuals for the job, even if many on our side may not agree with them politically.
But a vote to confirm Mr. Kennedy is a vote to make America sicker. A vote to confirm Mr. Kennedy is a vote to make America sicker. It is a vote to let pseudoscience dictate healthcare policy. It is a vote that will endanger the lives of the American people. And it is a vote, I truly believe, many, many Republicans will eventually deeply regret.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. President, I rise today alongside Senator Schumer and Senator Cortez Masto and so many others who have come to the floor today in opposition to the President's nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services is the top health official in our country and is in charge of everything from preventing disease outbreaks to making sure our kids are healthy and have a good start in life.
Americans need and deserve a Secretary who is guided by facts and science in decision making. After all, this is someone who will be in charge of overseeing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's critical efforts to fight disease outbreaks; the Food and Drug Administration's work to ensure the safety of the medications Americans rely on and the food on our grocery shelves; the National Institutes of Health's ground breaking, lifesaving medical research; the Administration for Community Living's support for older adults and people living with disabilities, as well as their families and caregivers; and the Administration for Children and Families' work to oversee the foster care system and child adoption programs--something I care deeply about as a cochair
Through these efforts and more, the Department of Health and Human Services directly touches more lives, actually, than any other Cabinet Agency.
The building that houses the Department is named for Minnesota's ``Happy Warrior,'' Vice President Hubert Humphrey, former U.S. Senator for the State of Minnesota. He was a champion for expanding access to healthcare, grew up in South Dakota, grew up at a drugstore, went on to get his degree at Minnesota and eventually became a U.S. Senator, always fighting for those--in his words--``in the shadows of life.'' Inscribed in the entrance hall of that building are words from Humphrey's final speech in 1977:
As well as, of course, those with disabilities.
That is the test for this Agency that is housed in the building with those words from the former Senator from my State, whose desk I actually have. I open it up, and I see his name, ``Hubert H. Humphrey'' carved into that desk.
You need someone as a Secretary of this Department that believes deeply in those words and believes in them with all the modern science and every tool we have to keep people healthy.
Robert Kennedy, Jr., does not pass that test.
Among the HHS Secretary's most important duties is ensuring American medical research remains on the cutting edge. Yet Mr. Kennedy's record reveals a consistent pattern of dismissing, distorting, and devaluing the very research that is critical to HHS's mission.
Among other things, the Secretary oversees the National Institutes of Health, which, for more than a century, has been a driving force behind such groundbreaking discoveries as blood tests to detect HIV and hepatitis, the use of lithium to manage bipolar disorder, and the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer.
This administration has already displayed open hostility to medical research. Over the weekend, we learned that the administration intends to defund and derail lifesaving medical research.
Let's be clear about what is happening here. They are looking for money everywhere: Head Start program, firefighter grants. They are looking for money over at NIH with that lifesaving research. Why? Because the Republicans, led by Donald Trump, are about to reveal over $2 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy. We know because that was a campaign promise.
And in the process, they are extinguishing hope for so many Americans looking for treatments and cures. That is why they are looking to cancel cancer trials and Head Start, to give tax cuts to their buddies.
Americans are already feeling the pain from this. I have constituents writing to me afraid and afraid for loved ones. I heard from one constituent over the weekend whose niece is fighting a very aggressive cancer but has been seeing results from an NIH-funded clinical trial. The niece has three small children at home while battling this disease. And without this trial, she doesn't know what else her physicians could do for her.
I have also heard from a constituent whose daughter got treatment at the NIH last year. She said it ``was a great experience, with great doctors and services,'' but she can't imagine how patients enrolled in NIH studies for life-threatening conditions are feeling right now.
Another constituent told me one of her kids is living with a rare cancer, and the administration's directive to suspend NIH funding threatens the prognosis.
This constituent wrote--
Everyone knows someone in their life who has benefited from that medical research.
For me, this is personal. I am standing here today because of one of the types of research that is on the chopping block, that is research on breast cancer. As many of our colleagues know, following a routine mammogram in February of 2021, I learned that I had stage IA breast cancer. I am lucky I only had stage IA. I still remember what it felt like to walk in here about 15 minutes after finding out what the tests had shown, and I had to walk in here like everything was fine and vote.
But then after that, I got treatment at the Mayo Clinic. All I had to have was a lumpectomy and radiation--I never even had to go through chemo--and I was in remission. And when it popped up again, the same thing: lumpectomy, radiation, no chemo.
That would have never happened 50 years ago. That would have never happened 25 years ago. That was because of research.
There are many in this Chamber, who either themselves or who have loved ones who have had cancer who have gotten through it successfully because of the research that occurred years and years back because our Nation decided we want to be in the lead. We are not going to be a follower. We are going to be in the lead when it comes to lifesaving research. We are going to do it in our great universities and medical institutions all over this country, and we are going to make sure that we put the funding into that research.
Not just Democrats said this--no, quite the contrary. All of these moves to invest in NIH and to understand how that research just can't occur in one place with a famous name but has to occur all over the country--that was bipartisan work, under Presidents that have been both Democratic and Republican. And we have built that research, and we are now on the cusp of finding out not just ways to make this easier to deal with and easier treatments and to go into remission, but ways to eradicate this once and for all. We are on the cusp of that with the mapping of the human genome and with all the information that we have gotten out of that.
We have seen what this has done for America. It has put us in the lead. Studies have shown that every dollar in NIH funding spurs almost $2.50 in economic activity. NIH funding supports hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country and pumps more than $92 billion into our economy. This includes generating $1.7 billion of economic activity and supporting over 2,500 businesses and nearly 8,000 jobs in my State alone.
I have heard from a number of constituents who are researchers, who solve things--scientists, entrepreneurs, a microbiology lab technician. One is worried that blocking Federal research funding will put their research on hold and prevent her from employing lab personnel.
This administration's reckless freeze on NIH funding is a threat to not just jobs but to those lifesaving cures. It will extinguish hopes. It will extinguish what will be lives that will come after that and after that. It will set back American innovation and put us at a competitive disadvantage with countries like China. And this is just the beginning of the assault on healthcare.
So it will be the HHS Secretary's job to push back against these attacks. I haven't seen that happen--not with this nominee. Mr. Kennedy has demonstrated open hostility to science.
At an event in Arizona, days before the President nominated him, Mr. Kennedy said that ``600 people are going to''--this is his quote-- ``walk into offices at NIH and 600 people are going to leave.''
On top of his desire to deprive our government of the great work done every day by the men and women who keep Americans healthy, Mr. Kennedy has expressed his intent to roll back the Agency's focus on combating infectious diseases and remove funding that improves our understanding of how, why, and where diseases are spreading.
Don't take my word for this, if you want; just take his. These are quotes.
He said--
That is his plan for overseeing the NIH: give infectious disease a break.
Well, Mr. President, measles doesn't take a break. Tuberculosis doesn't take a break. Polio doesn't take a break.
Unfortunately, Mr. Kennedy's animosity toward the NIH does not come to us in a vacuum. He has long been a vocal opponent of medical research. When influential voices promote the idea that data-backed, evidence-based research is unreliable, it breaks down trust in medicine and public health science as a whole. To place Mr. Kennedy atop our Nation's largest public health Agency is to provide this voice of constantly questioning science and telling parents they shouldn't get their kids vaccinated--it gives that voice a megaphone.
People are welcome to their opinion. Certainly, they are in this Chamber and walking down the street. That is fine. This is America. But it is giving this voice that is not based in science a megaphone.
For generations, America has led the way on medical research and global health. Our Nation's scientists gave the world penicillin, anesthesia, the pacemaker, and more. Mr. Kennedy's nomination puts decades worth of scientific advancement at risk--so much so, in fact, that the Wall Street Journal editorial board, not exactly a bastion of liberalism, called it ``a threat to American medical innovation.''
Of course, Mr. Kennedy's opposition to science is hardly a secret. Over the years, he has repeatedly chosen to ignore scientific evidence in favor of conspiracy theories, most notably those involving vaccines.
Let me be absolutely clear on this: Vaccines are among the greatest achievement of modern science, and the evidence supporting their safety is overwhelming. Vaccines have saved 154 million lives over the last half century. That is about six lives every minute. And each life saved gains an average of 66 years of health.
In spite of that, Mr. Kennedy has long promoted baseless theories about vaccines, including, most notably, during the pandemic. During a period in our Nation and world history when trust in science was more important than ever, Mr. Kennedy, instead, chose to stir up doubts about lifesaving vaccines. Mr. Kennedy actively sought to halt the rollout of the vaccines just 6 months after President Trump--the same President who has now nominated him to oversee healthcare in our country--declared the vaccines a miracle. That is from President Trump. You all remember those days when we were trying to get the vaccines out as soon as possible.
In May 2021, Mr. Kennedy filed a petition with the FDA demanding that the Agency end authorization for the vaccines and avoid approving any future COVID vaccine.
Mr. Kennedy's denial of basic science goes beyond his opinions on vaccines. He has, on numerous occasions, spread misinformation about the origins of diseases, claiming without evidence that humans, rather than bacteria or viruses, cause infectious diseases. For example, he has claimed that Lyme disease, which is spread by ticks--a big deal in Minnesota--he claims it was created by the U.S. military in a lab on Long Island in the 1950s. The fact is that the bacteria that causes Lyme disease has been around for at least 60,000 years, and the ticks that spread the disease have been around for at least 99 million years.
I also want to bring attention to Mr. Kennedy's denial of avian flu-- key for me on the Agriculture Committee. Last year, Mr. Kennedy said the World Health Organization ``fabricated the 2006 bird flu outbreak, which of course never happened.'' This is what he said.
Now, my State is the largest producer of turkeys, and Minnesota turkey farmers will tell you that avian flu isn't fabricated; it is all too real.
I remember hugging a turkey producer who had just had to eradicate all of his birds. He was so proud of the operation he had. He was a small turkey producer. Just like that, because of the avian flu, he had to eradicate and kill those birds.
I have heard from one constituent who teaches farm business management at a rural Minnesota community college. Several of his students are turkey farmers, and they have seen firsthand the devastating impact of that bird flu virus when it comes in: A turkey dies. They know it is trouble. They get it tested. They know it is going to go to the whole flock and beyond, and they have to take immediate action.
Part of the result of that is, of course, higher prices at the grocery store. When my constituent met with his students to complete their 2025 cash flow projections, he said:
We all know that those young farmers are not alone. For 3 years now, poultry farmers in my State and across the country have been fighting a new outbreak of avian flu, which has affected 156 million birds and counting.
Following the 2015 avian flu outbreak, our colleague Senator Cornyn and I worked to establish an animal vaccine bank and disease response program as part of the 2018 farm bill. This has given farmers and public health agencies critical resources for containing outbreaks, but it is clear we need to be doing more, not less. That is why I am working with Senator Boozman. I hope we can pass a farm bill and really upgrade our work when it comes to avian flu.
But to do all that and the potential of having vaccines here for various animals, we are going to need people in the government that believe in science. Placing Mr. Kennedy in charge of public health in our country could unravel that progress and more. He has already said he didn't believe in the avian flu, that it was somehow manufactured. What more evidence do you need, I say to my colleagues across the aisle?
Facts are the foundation of medical science, and our next HHS Secretary must commit to making decisions based on facts, not personal beliefs.
I also have concerns that Mr. Kennedy will be a rubberstamp for the administration's plans to undo the progress that we have made on bringing down the sky-high costs of prescription drugs. For decades, Big Pharma companies had a sweetheart deal written into law that allowed them to charge our seniors whatever they wanted for lifesaving prescription drugs.
That was unacceptable, and, along with my colleagues, we successfully led the legislation to end it. Taking on the big drug companies wasn't easy. I did for years and years and years. They had three lobbyists for every Member of Congress and spent hundreds of millions of dollars--I am sure many watching tonight have seen those ads--trying to stop us. That was a great deal that got written into law. I don't know how they got it, but they got it.
Then we said: Wait a minute. Why are these drugs in other industrialized nations half the price of the drugs that we have in America, especially when we paid for a lot of the research with our taxpayer money? Then we found out, well, for the biggest drug-buying group in the country for prescription drugs--our seniors--they get locked-in profits on that, not like the VA, where they can actually negotiate for our brave veterans. But when it comes to all the seniors, no negotiation was allowed.
The power of over 50 million American seniors negotiating, that is a pretty strong bloc. And our constituents finally said: Enough is enough--major issues when people were running for office. And together, we ended Big Pharma's sweetheart deal--Democrats only--in the Inflation Reduction Act and gave Medicare the power to negotiate better prices for prescription drugs.
So what was the result of that? Well, already, the last administration negotiated the first 10 drugs--blockbuster drugs: Eliquis, Xarelto, Januvia, Jardiance. The negotiated prices that they negotiated with Big Pharma--because if Big Pharma didn't negotiate with them, they were then not going to be able to sell their drugs through Medicare. Do you know what prices they got?
Big Pharma is still suing. They have lost every single lawsuit saying that we, in this body, didn't have the power--didn't have the power--to stop the sweetheart deal that Congress had given them. Of course, we had the power.
But do you know what happened with those negotiated prices for seniors? They went down on those--just the first 10 blockbuster drugs-- 60, 70 percent. And no one has questioned the statistic that in 1 year, when this takes
That is not all we did, because the next drugs are coming down the pike for negotiations--I will mention that in a minute--and the next ones after that and the next ones after that. The torch has been passed on to this administration. It is their turn to negotiate and get those 60 percent, 70 percent, 80 percent reductions like Secretary Becerra and the Biden administration were able to get because they were organized, because they knew what they were doing, and they stood tall and they negotiated those prices after we passed the law.
What else did we do? The legislation passed under the last administration capped monthly insulin costs for seniors at $35, capped total out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors at $2,000 a year, starting this year. And these savings are just the beginning. Last month, the previous administration announced the next 15 drugs Medicare must negotiate. These are more blockbusters: diabetes and weight loss drugs like Ozempic, Rybelsus, Wegovy, which 2.3 million Medicare Part D enrollees take, including thousands of seniors in my State.
For these seniors, getting those lower prices--you know how much those drugs cost right now--makes a huge difference.
Finally, seniors in America--and, by the way, it helps nonseniors as well. We already see the insulin prices lowered by the companies. Even though the law--I would have liked to pass a law for nonseniors. Our colleagues wouldn't join us in doing that. But the market worked, and they are also getting that $35-per-month cap.
Think about what these next drugs will mean, though. Minnesotans like Brian--Brian has been paying more than a hundred bucks a month for Breo Ellipta, one of the asthma medications covered in last month's announcement for the drugs of the Trump administration--it is now on their plate to negotiate. Brian has been taking that for 20 years. After all that, $24,000 spent on just one medication, think about if that was reduced 60 to 70 percent. That is what they could do if they have the right HHS Secretary.
Judith pays $1,100 a month for Otezla, an arthritis drug also covered in last month's announcement. That is two-thirds of her Social Security check.
Relief could be on the way for Judith, for Brian, and for millions of seniors like them, but only if this administration follows the law and commits to continuing Medicare drug price negotiation.
This task, of course, doesn't fall to the Veterans Secretary, doesn't fall to the Commerce Secretary; it is the HHS Secretary. And I know I speak for many of my colleagues when I say I have serious doubts about this nominee when it comes to this.
Why? Well, to discuss Mr. Kennedy's testimony before the Finance Committee last week and his responses to questions submitted in writing, he could even have clarified it in writing.
What did he say? Our colleague Senator Cortez Masto, who just spoke, pointed out that the President, our Republican colleagues, and Big Pharma wanted to repeal the law we passed--that is the Inflation Reduction Act--that contains the Medicare negotiation. She asked Mr. Kennedy if he would commit to following the law and negotiate a good deal for our seniors.
This is his response:
Oh, come on. It is a very straightforward question. Congress passed a law. The former President signed it into law. It is the law that you have to follow, and the law says you have to negotiate these drug prices--not to mention that your Attorney General is going to have to defend the lawsuits that Big Pharma is bringing to try to upend the law that they are losing left and right, and you sure better continue the track record of the Biden administration and win those cases.
So when Catherine Cortez Masto received this answer, which was a nonanswer, in fact, he actually said something that makes you think, is he really going to follow the law and negotiate a good deal for our seniors? So she asked him to clarify his comments.
His response:
End what? I don't know. That is not leadership. He should have known all about the prescription drug program and Medicare Part D. He is taking over a major Agency that does this work for 50 million seniors under Medicare--50 million seniors. Out-of-pocket savings of $1.5 billion in just 1 year on only the first 10 drugs, and then there are going to be 15 more and 15 more and 15 more.
This is not the answer of someone who is prepared to stand up and lower drug prices; that is the answer of someone who will do whatever the President asks him to do, no questions asked.
Mr. Kennedy was also given the chance to provide clarity by answering our colleagues' questions in writing. Yet he refused to give clear answers to the vast majority of the questions.
When asked if he would refrain from making policy changes that would raise drug costs for seniors with cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, or chronic kidney disease, Mr. Kennedy refused to answer. He also refused to provide a clear answer when asked if he supported policies that hold Big Pharma companies accountable for price gouging.
From the person nominated to shape health policy in our country for the next 4 years, we need someone who will commit to bringing down drug costs. This is particularly important after the actions the administration has taken in the last few weeks.
On his first day in office, the President signed an Executive order that cut Affordable Care Act enrollment periods short and reversed policies that make it affordable for parents to add their kids to their health insurance. He is also making it harder for 24 million people to keep coverage year to year by revoking automatic reenrollment in affordable healthcare plans.
The Affordable Care Act is the law of the land whether the President likes it or not, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services must follow the law because, guess what, also, the American people like this law. But when Mr. Kennedy was asked about the Affordable Care Act, he attacked it, saying ``Americans don't like it'' instead of promising to uphold the law.
The President's efforts to overturn the ACA are only the beginning. He is also taking away new initiatives that lower prescription drug prices, including one that offers seniors a flat $2 copay for drugs that treat common chronic conditions.
In less than a month, this administration has made clear that it intends to do Big Pharma's bidding instead of sticking to commonsense policies that have brought down healthcare costs. Reversing them won't bring down prices; it will raise them.
We have problems with healthcare access, costs, and the like, so we need someone at the HHS who is actually going to work with us to take this down. Whether it is the denial of care for way too many patients under insurance policies or whether it is the expense of these prescription drugs, where still more work needs to be done on patents and some of the reforms on a bipartisan basis that we have gotten out of Judiciary, we need an HHS Secretary that supports reform, and by reform, I mean bringing down prices.
If you have been able to keep your healthcare coverage year to year through the Affordable Care Act, then this nominee will not fight for you. If you are a young adult who has been able to stay on their parents' healthcare until you are 26, don't look at this nominee to fight for you. If you are a senior shelling out thousands of dollars a month because of that sweetheart deal I just mentioned, he is not going to fight for you. He wouldn't even answer the question on whether he was going to keep negotiating.
None of this that he has talked about in these hearings, from my perspective, whether it is a rubberstamp for withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization, whether it is upending the work of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, whether it is what I have just spoken about tonight about not believing in vaccines or not carrying on the work of negotiating prescription drugs, none of this will bring down healthcare costs. None of this will make Americans healthier.
President Eisenhower, who established the Agency that is now HHS-- President Eisenhower, a trusted Republican President--said in his 1954 State
The person at the helm of this Department must above all share that concern that President Eisenhower put out there so clearly. He must prioritize the well-being of his fellow Americans, must be guided by facts and science, not politics or personal opinions. That is why 17,000 doctors have sounded the alarm about Mr. Kennedy's nomination. It is why more than 700 public health experts called his nomination ``dangerous.'' It is why, for the first time in living memory, more than 70 Nobel Prize winners across the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics, and economics came together in public opposition to this Cabinet pick.
I believe in listening to experts. I trust doctors. I trust public health researchers. I trust Nobel Prize winners. That is why, on behalf of every senior who relies on medications to live and age with dignity, every child who deserves the promise of a future free from preventable diseases, and every American whose health and safety depend on sound scientific guidance, I will be voting no on his nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do what they know is the right thing and vote no as well.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Healthcare is not just a policy to me; it is deeply personal. I got into public service because of my own healthcare journey. When I was 9, I was hospitalized with a serious childhood illness. It was similar to spinal meningitis--that wasn't the exact diagnosis but similar. While I fought to survive and then ultimately to get better and fully recover, my grandparents, who raised me, struggled to figure out how to pay for the lifesaving care that I needed and received. In total, I spent 3 months in the hospital in Madison, WI.
When I talk about healthcare, I don't just speak as a U.S. Senator or as a Wisconsinite; I am speaking as a person who knows what it was like to spend months in a hospital bed. I am speaking as someone who knows the emotional toll and the financial stress that it put on my loved ones. I am speaking as someone who knows firsthand how important it is to protect our children from serious illness and the dire consequences when our children do get sick. That is why I was so disturbed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s nomination to lead our Nation's largest public health Agency.
As a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I was able to question Mr. Kennedy at one of his nomination hearings. I watched as he over and over again parroted the same answer when pressed about his anti-vaccine views. ``Show me the data,'' he would say. When asked if he still believes that vaccines cause autism, he would not commit. He again said, ``Show me the data.''
Well, Mr. Kennedy has had every opportunity to review the overwhelming consensus of doctors, researchers, and experts that vaccines are safe and effective. He certainly had the opportunity to do so not just before his confirmation hearing but before spending a decade peddling misinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines.
Apparently, he didn't look at the research before traveling to Samoa to rail against the measles vaccine. Perhaps if he had, the 83 people-- primarily infants and children--who died from a subsequent outbreak of measles would still be with us.
I think it is clear that he also didn't bother to review the research before spreading misinformation online, with one study finding that among verified Twitter accounts, Mr. Kennedy was by far the top purveyor of vaccine misinformation, garnering more than three times as much engagement as the second most retweeted account.
Now, we are supposed to believe that if we simply show Mr. Kennedy the research, he will change his tune. Well, I believe someone applying to be the top health official in this country shouldn't have to be convinced to follow the science. We shouldn't have to hold their feet to the fire on whether they would be willing to protect our children from polio or measles. They should already be an expert in the field, not an expert at evading responsibility and spreading conspiracy theories.
Americans deserve a leading health official who believes in science, not in conspiracies. If Mr. Kennedy is not willing to believe or even review the overwhelming data on vaccines before spreading dangerous lies about their safety, then I highly doubt he will change his tune when leading the Department of Health and Human Services. And it is not just his statements like ``No vaccine is safe and effective.''
By the way, he really did make that statement. I have seen it on a podcast. But he has repeatedly made claims with no evidence. He said Wi-Fi causes cancer. He said antidepressants caused school shootings. He questioned whether HIV does, in fact, cause AIDS. And time and again, he is showing us who he is. By his own admission, he is not interested in the research. He has no time for the data. And these claims may seem outlandish. They may seem harmless, but they all point to a fundamental truth about Mr. Kennedy. He not only does not believe the science, but he is willing to actively undermine it. He spreads dangerous conspiracy theories, and he puts families' health and safety at risk.
RFK, Jr., will put Americans in harm's way. Kids will be at risk of getting preventable diseases like measles and mumps. Women will have essential healthcare ripped away. Families will be further away, not closer, to having cures to diseases like cancer. And, sadly, the list goes on and on.
So I urge my colleagues, especially those who understand how dangerous vaccine skepticism is, to ask themselves this simple question: Will this nominee keep your constituents safe? Or will he harm them?
For Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the answer is clear. I oppose this nomination on behalf of Wisconsin families and encourage my colleagues to vote no.
Mr. President, I rise tonight in strong opposition to the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. It is no overstatement for me to say that it is hard for me to imagine a nominee less qualified that would actually be presented for the job of HHS Secretary. Robert F. Kennedy, not only does he not pass muster, this is not even close.
I still can't believe we are even having this discussion. He is a conspiracy theorist who is so focused on his conspiracy theory. When you think of what we need the HHS Secretary to do, Robert F. Kennedy is a hazard to our health. Certainly, we can do better than this. He is just manifestly unqualified.
I don't know how else to put it. This is not a partisan exercise for me. In fact, some of the nominees that have been presented, I voted for some of them. But I can't vote for Robert F. Kennedy. Not only is he a hazard to our health, not only is he manifestly unqualified, it is clear that he will be a rubberstamp for Washington Republicans and their attempts to raise healthcare costs for hundreds of thousands of Georgians. He is a threat to public health and the thousands of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees who work tirelessly every single day to keep us safe.
He has enforced the administration's gag order that is literally keeping medical professionals from sharing information to get diseases like bird flu under control, cancer researchers from doing their important, lifesaving work--who among us has not been touched in some way by cancer?--doctors and their ability and hospitals from accessing resources to lower the maternal mortality rate, which is abysmally high in this country, particularly in a State like Georgia. I will be voting no on Mr. Kennedy's nomination to lead HHS, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to somehow find a way to do the right thing and vote no with me.
Mr. Kennedy won't work to lower Georgians' healthcare costs or increase
I was so proud that, in my first few months in the Senate, I was able to play a critical role in passing the American Rescue Plan which, among other things, lowered Georgians' healthcare premiums by hundreds of thousands of dollars on average. It is, quite frankly, the kind of thing that makes this job worth it for me, being able to help ordinary folks.
That tax cut literally helped bring healthcare into reach for tens of thousands of Georgians and millions of Americans. These tax cuts are so critical that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the number of Americans without healthcare would grow by 3.8 million in just 1 year--in just 1 year, 3.8 million, without healthcare--if the premium subsidies that we now enjoy were allowed to expire. We know that that would impact thousands of Georgians who have only recently been able to receive healthcare coverage.
If these tax credits are allowed to expire, a 45-year-old in Georgia with $62,000 annual income would see premiums go up by $1,414 a year. A 60-year-old couple in Georgia with an $82,000 annual income would see their premiums go up by a staggering $18,157 a year. Can you imagine someone making $82,000 a year--a 60-year-old couple--and all of a sudden, their health insurance for the year goes up by more than $18,000? We know what that is. That is the difference between having healthcare coverage and not having it at all.
Nearly one-third of Americans have less than $500 in savings in their bank account, and so these folks don't have that kind of extra dough. They don't have that kind of extra cash on hand to pay for something that is vitally necessary, and we don't know--we never know--when we will really need our health insurance.
And so every single day, as we watch the games that Washington politicians play--for me, this is no game. I often say that if we would center ordinary people, we have a chance at getting the public policy right. If we will center people rather than politics, we might manage to get the right policy.
And so as these debates rage on, as nominees like this come before us, I am thinking about people like my constituent Cassie Cox. She is from Bainbridge, GA. She wasn't able to afford healthcare on the Affordable Care Act Marketplace until the premium tax credit brought healthcare into reach. And shortly after she became insured, she severely cut her hand, landing her in the emergency room with 35 stitches.
With insurance, it still cost her about $300, but she could figure out how to get that dough. Had it not been for the tax credits that allowed her to get healthcare, she could have been in financial ruin from a severe cut of the hand, something that could happen to any one of us at any time.
She is one of the hundreds of thousands of Georgians at risk of losing their coverage if these tax credits are allowed to expire. And so I ask the nominee for HHS: What do you think about those? Mr. Kennedy told me when I met him privately in my office that he wanted to work with President Trump to lower healthcare premiums. I said, Good.
That is why I was deeply troubled when I questioned Mr. Kennedy on his support for these tax credits in his hearing in front of the Senate Finance Committee. I asked him: Yes or no, Mr. Kennedy, are you aware that the premium subsidies that help save Georgians an average of $531 a month are set to expire at the end of the year?
He said, yes, he is aware.
And I asked him, yes or no, if he supports Congress extending these tax credits which lower Americans' premiums--something he told me was a priority for him. Suddenly, Mr. Kennedy could not give me a yes-or-no answer. I wonder why.
He told me in private that he cared about healthcare. He said he was aware that these tax credits were set to expire at the end of the year. He said he wanted to lower healthcare costs. But when I asked him whether he would support Congress extending these tax credits, the crusader all of a sudden become a politician and couldn't give me a yes-or-no answer. That is not a good sign.
It is a pretty simple question to the nominee to run the Federal Agency tasked with protecting the health of all Americans: Do you support lower healthcare premiums and keeping millions of people insured? That question apparently was a bit too challenging for Mr. Kennedy.
So the nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services cannot tell me if he supports preventing Georgians' healthcare costs from spiking and keeping people like Cassie Cox on her healthcare plan. I cannot support his nomination. I don't work for him. I don't work for the insurance companies. I work for Cassie Cox and other Georgians like her.
We know that these subsidies, which expire this year, are at serious risk of not getting renewed. And if there is anybody in the Federal Government who ought to be advocating for the patients, advocating for public health, reminding the President of how important this is, surely it ought to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
And so I am very concerned about this because, right now, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are already starting to put together a tax bill that I would describe as Robin Hood in reverse. They want to take tax credits needed by ordinary, hard-working Georgians in order to give an unneeded tax cut to their wealthy friends. That is Robin Hood in reverse. It is bad public policy. It is bad for our health, and I would argue it is bad for our economy as we create the circumstances for having a workforce that will be sicker, less productive, less competitive on the global stage. Mr. Robert Kennedy, I am afraid, will similarly aid and abet this process. He will hold the door open for Washington Republicans while thousands of Georgians get kicked off their healthcare.
For Cassie Cox and for the hundreds of thousands of Georgians who risk losing their healthcare coverage if premium tax credits are allowed to expire, I am voting no on Secretary Kennedy's nomination for HHS Secretary.
But that is not the only reason I am voting no. You see, every Sunday I return home to Georgia to preach in the Ebenezer pulpit. Ebenezer Baptist Church is the spiritual home of Martin Luther King, Jr. Some folks ask me why I continue to hold that job. I return to Georgia and I return to my church every Sunday because I don't want to spend all my time talking to politicians. I am afraid I might accidentally become one.
I serve in politics, but in a real sense, I tolerate politics so that I can do the important work for the people--work that I tried to do long before I came to the Senate. It was Martin Luther King, Jr., after all, copastor of our church, who said: Out of all the injustices--Dr. King said--of all the injustices, ``inequality in healthcare is the most shocking and the most inhumane.''
It was that conviction that inspired me in 2014--years before I decided to run for elected office--to protest State politicians in Georgia as they were refusing to expand Medicaid and close the healthcare coverage gap which would improve healthcare access for over 640,000 Georgians.
We had just passed the Affordable Care Act. We were caught up in the throes of the debate around that policy. Georgia refused to expand Medicaid, leaving 640,000 Georgians in the healthcare coverage gap.
I preach every Sunday morning in honor of one who spent much of his ministry, according to the Gospels, healing the sick, even those with preexisting conditions. That is what leprosy was, a preexisting condition. I could not preach the Gospel that I try to preach every Sunday and then allow Georgia politicians to leave hard-working Georgians in the cold when we literally had a prescription that could provide healing.
So I and members of my pastoral staff and other volunteers, other activists, went to the office of the then-Governor of Georgia, and we staged a sit-in at the Governor's office. And when we were arrested and taken to the Fulton County Jail, another wave of protesters came in and sat down and took our place.
I was here in the Senate again in 2017 protesting the fact that Washington Republicans were getting ready to pass a $2 trillion tax cut for the wealthiest
But it is also one of the reasons I decided to go and run for office myself, to move from agitated to legislative, to translate my protest into public policy. Perhaps I could get a few more tools to help the people that I have always advocated for.
And so in my first few months in office, I made it a priority to sweeten the deal that further incentivized Georgia politicians to finally do the right thing and expand Medicaid. I thought to myself, if I could get additional resources in Federal legislation to further incentivize States like Georgia to expand Medicaid, surely, they will expand Medicaid. It only makes sense. Not only is it the right thing to do, it would be the smart thing to do.
I remember standing up to Democrats, many of whom, unlike me, represent blue States. I am from Georgia, a purple State. Georgia had not elected Democratic Senators in years. I think they sent me and my friend Jon Ossoff to represent them in the Senate because they understand we are not focused on partisan politics; we are focused on the people we were sent here to represent. I remember standing up to Democrats in a Democratic caucus talking to many of my colleagues who represent blue States. And I began to make the case for Georgia, and they responded to me.
They said: Why should we put more Federal dollars toward States that don't want to help their own constituents? Why should we reward Georgia for digging in its heels?
I reminded them that the people of Georgia were literally being held hostage by their legislature. It was standing between them and access to healthcare. And maybe if we just sweetened the pot a little bit more, we could encourage the legislature to do the right thing, encourage the Governor to do the right thing.
Sadly, after I was able to secure $14.5 billion for nonexpansion States, including $2 billion for Georgia alone, to just incentivize Medicaid expansion, they left that money on the table and 600,000 Georgians in the Medicaid coverage gap.
Who were they working for? I work for Georgia.
Thankfully, there are some folks who heard it, who heard the call, who responded. The incentives I secured led to North Carolina, for example, recently expanding Medicaid. Even the staunchest opponent of President Obama's signature law could not justify the overwhelming financial incentive to finally close the coverage gap.
But Georgia politicians continued to dig in their heels more than a decade after the Affordable Care Act has become settled law. No matter where you are on this side of the debate, which side you are on in the debate about the Affordable Care Act, can you imagine Social Security in 40 States? Can you imagine Medicare or Medicaid in 40 States and whether you get it or not depends on which State you are in?
Well, while craven politicians are still fighting the fights of more than a decade ago, literally millions of Americans, most of them hard- working Americans--it is the working poor. That is who we are talking about. They are in the healthcare coverage gap while politicians play the games that politicians play. It is shameful. It is immoral. It is unjustifiable.
When I think about this, I often think about a woman that I met while doing my work named Heather Payne. I think of Heather from Dalton, GA, often, because here is a woman in the healthcare coverage gap. And guess what she does for a living? She is a traveling nurse. Think about that. She has committed her whole life to making sure that other people have the healthcare coverage that they need. Her job is healthcare.
She worked throughout COVID as an ER and labor-and-delivery nurse. Yet she often did not have healthcare coverage herself because she fell into the healthcare coverage gap.
That is who we are talking about, Heather the nurse. She made too much money to qualify for Medicaid--conventional Medicaid--but she could not afford coverage on the marketplace. So about 2\1/2\ years ago, Heather, who sometimes had healthcare coverage and sometimes she didn't because she was a traveling nurse--about 2\1/2\ years ago, she noticed something was wrong in her body. And even though she noticed that something was wrong and she was in pain and discomfort, she couldn't go immediately to see a doctor. She literally had to keep working through her pain, working through her discomfort, working through her uncertainty until she could save enough money out-of-pocket for a visit to a neurologist.
By the time she got to a neurologist months later, the neurologist told her that she had already had a series of small strokes. Now, with the knowledge of what had happened to her, Heather had to continue putting off serious medical procedures because she could not work as an ER nurse anymore, and yet she was still waiting to get approval for disability so she could get Medicaid coverage. There are ways in which our system is broken and needs to be reformed. Think about that. Heather, despite spending her career providing lifesaving care to others, is not able to access healthcare herself because she cannot meet Georgia's work requirements rules.
I don't see how anybody could think that is right. I think it is wrong that, in the richest country on the planet, we don't want to lower the cost of healthcare for people who work hard serving our community and, in Heather's case, literally keeping us healthy.
And because I think about Heather quite often, I asked Robert Kennedy what does Heather need, because our Governor set up his own program with these work requirements that just create redtape. I said: Does Heather need monthly bureaucratic paperwork requirements to prove she is working when she is sick or does she need access to healthcare so she can finally get healthy and get back to work?
Mr. Kennedy told me that she needed healthcare, not work requirements--right answer. But I found his answer interesting because this administration is not working to get Heather healthcare. In fact, they want to continue to allow Georgia to waste taxpayer dollars right now, implementing an expensive and flawed system of bureaucracy and redtape to put more obstacles between Georgians and the healthcare they desperately need.
We have a program in Georgia right now that the Governor set up, rather than expanding Medicaid, and most of the money that they have gotten from the Federal Government, about 80 percent of it, is spent on administrative costs. And 18 months later, only a few thousand Georgians are signed up, while hundreds of thousands of Georgians are in the healthcare coverage gap. It is not right. It is not smart.
I believe in hard work. My late father had a fierce work ethic. I watched him and my mother wake up early every morning, and they woke us up. My dad just had this saying: You didn't sleep late in this house. You didn't care if it was Saturday or Sunday. As a little kid, he would wake us up: Now, get ready. Put your shoes on.
I said: Get ready for what?
He said: I don't know. Just get up and get ready. Be ready for whatever.
I believe in hard work. It was drilled in me. But an ER nurse who has been taking care of people for years, she doesn't need somebody to put a fire under her to get her to go to work. She needs to be able to get basic healthcare so she can get healthy and go back to work.
So I was deeply disturbed when I kept asking Mr. Kennedy about this, and he kept changing his answer. He kept flip-flopping. He said at one point:
I wonder what was going on. I think I know what. I think, already, he is trying his best to navigate the politics of the folks in the administration. We are not committed to the Heathers of this world.
So if Mr. Kennedy can't decide if an ER nurse from Dalton, GA, who spent years saving other people's lives and now needs healthcare insurance to save her own life, deserves healthcare--if he can't decide that, then how in the world am I supposed to vote yes on his being the HHS Secretary?
So for Heather and for the hundreds of thousands of Georgians in the
Not only that, as a Senator from the great State of Georgia, I am very proud that I represent the Georgia-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, which was created nearly 80 years ago to prevent the spread of malaria across our country. The CDC does lifesaving work to control disease outbreaks, to ensure our food and our water are safe, to keep our brave servicemembers abroad safe, and to prevent leading causes of death, such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes.
The CDC is one of those entities that, I think, is vastly underrated and underappreciated because we don't see, most of the time, the bad stuff that they have saved us from. It is hard to get credit for the bad stuff that you prevent from happening, but where in the world would we be without the CDC?
I think we got a good glimpse of how important their work is as we were all dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. There are many other bugs like that out there. Thank goodness for their work, for the scientific method, for their discipline. The CDC employs 10,000 Georgians, and their work is so critical for every American. In addition to that, the CDC has a great economic impact on Georgia as well. For every one job at the CDC, three jobs are created. One job at the CDC creates three jobs in the Georgia economy.
That is why students come from all over the world to study in Georgia research institutions--because of its proximity to the CDC. They come to Emory University. They come to Georgia Tech. They come to Morehouse College because it is near the CDC--the Morehouse School of Medicine. The Centers host over 125,000 visitors on their campus every year. The CDC invests hundreds of millions of dollars into Georgia organizations and institutions to partner on research. In fact, for every dollar the CDC spends, the Georgia economy sees $2 in growth--healthy people, a healthy economy. If the CDC were a business, it would be the seventh largest business in my State.
So, last June, I visited the CDC, in carrying on the spirit of my predecessor in my seat, my friend, the late Republican Senator Johnny Isakson. Johnny Isakson was a good man. We didn't agree on everything, but he was just a good human being, and he was a fierce advocate for the CDC. I am honored to carry on that tradition in his memory because he understood, as do I, that the CDC, again, is saving us from so many bad things that we don't even see. There is a way in which, because of their work, we are blessed and privileged into cluelessness. He understood not just the economic benefits of the CDC but also the tremendous importance of investing in our public health.
During the first Trump administration, Senator Isakson, a Republican, questioned all HHS nominees about how they would support the critical work of the CDC. Think about that in sharp contrast to what we are seeing on the other side of the aisle these days. Johnny Isakson would be questioning whoever was the nominee for the HHS: What do you think about the CDC? Because--imagine that--he actually believed in advice and consent.
I don't know what we are witnessing in this moment, but we are hard- pressed to call this advice and consent between two coequal branches of government. Senator Isakson--a Republican Senator from Georgia--fought for the CDC to expand its scope of research into areas like preventing mass violence and mass shootings, pandemics; and because the CDC was equipped to expand this research, it turned Federal investments into cures and treatments and lives that are saved, not Republican lives, not Democratic lives--human lives.
It is easy to get behind the work of the CDC. It ought to be. After all, look what the CDC has accomplished over the past 80 years because the Centers have been well-funded and have always received support on both sides of the aisle: eradicating smallpox globally; nearly eradicating polio, measles and mumps, which is responsible for saving the lives of at least 42,000 Americans; finding treatments and supporting preventive care for our HIV-positive brothers and sisters; creating an 18-percent drop in infections by helping hospitals implement safety standards that save 4,500 lives each year so you don't die of some bug in the hospital that kills you while you are trying to get well. You can thank the CDC for that. This is because the CDC has always been supported by both sides of the aisle.
I saw that work up close when I visited the CDC last June. I spoke with researchers and medical professionals who were already working to address bird flu, which poses a danger to our poultry farmers and our grocery prices.
Can I tell you? I spent time with those CDC workers. They are not the enemy as some have tried to paint these Federal workers in recent days--shameful. They didn't deserve to get a blanket memo encouraging them--whoever they are, no matter what job they hold--to just resign. They are the wall. They have been protecting us. They are the reason we are able to go to sleep at night and not even think about certain things. It is hard to get credit for saving people from the bad stuff they don't even see.
I visited the insectary where the CDC was testing thousands of mosquitos for malaria to help prevent malaria deaths globally; to protect Americans traveling abroad and keep the disease from spreading to the United States.
So it is concerning for anyone who cares about stopping the spread of deadly diseases to the United States to hear some of the past comments about the CDC from the nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Kennedy, who would manage a budget--listen--of nearly $2 trillion--$2 trillion, including the CDC's budget, as comparing the CDC's work to Nazi death camps and sexual abusers in the Catholic Church.
He said:
So I asked Mr. Kennedy if he retracted those statements, and he denied making them at all. He said: No, I didn't say that. So I read him the transcripts of his remarks at the AutismOne conferences in 2013 and 2019, where he made these comments.
In 2019, Mr. Kennedy said:
He said--
In 2013, at the same conference, he said:
He is talking about the CDC. You can slice and dice these words all you want. The moment at which you put the CDC and Nazi death camps in the same statement and you are the Secretary nominee for HHS, Houston, Georgia, America, we have a problem, and that problem is Robert Kennedy. God help us if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle cannot get past partisan politics and cannot find the courage to stand up to Donald Trump and say no to Robert Kennedy.
So don't chastise me and ask me how in the world would I vote against him when, 18 months ago, he was a Democrat. That is not the game we are playing here. This is not about Democrat or Republican. And if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to abdicate their responsibility to seriously engage in advice and consent, that is their problem. I am not obligated to play along. We are voting against Robert Kennedy not out of some partisan impulse, not out of some sense of shirts versus skins. This is literally a matter of life and death. We are voting against him because he is manifestly unqualified, and anybody who is honest knows it is true.
These are serious times. A few days ago, in the midst of all that we are facing, the Trump administration silenced
The American Cancer Society, an organization whose work we can all support, called on the Trump administration to ``restore access to comprehensive data, refrain from changes that would lead to incomplete future data collection and commit to ensure evidence-based science can proceed without additional bureaucracy or redtape.''
They said:
That is the American Cancer Society.
The Trump administration removed vast amounts of government datasets, resources, and web pages across the CDC to comply with the administration's shortsighted DEI Executive orders.
How is an organization like CDC supposed to address the social determinants of health? This is keeping our best scientists and our researchers from their work to treat and cure cancer.
Everybody has lost somebody to cancer, and everybody would like to see more progress in preventing and curing disease. So I would like Mr. Kennedy to explain to my constituents in Georgia how datasets that help cancer organizations work to eliminate cancer is somehow a problem that needs to be eliminated.
Thankfully, these web pages have been temporarily restored, but that is only because it was ordered by a judge.
I asked him: Yes or no, Mr. Kennedy, do you agree with the administration's gag order? He called it ``standard operating procedure.'' Well, I don't believe hindering cancer research is ``standard operating procedure.''
I fear this administration's attempt to dismantle the CDC is going to slow down desperately needed lifesaving research, and Mr. Kennedy will be there aiding and abetting that work.
We have to address this issue of maternal mortality. This weekly update around the issues that pertain to our health is a critical resource for researchers, doctors, and public health professionals looking to combat our country's shamefully high maternal mortality rate.
Shockingly, Georgia is one of the worst States for maternal mortality and maternal healthcare access. In fact, a Black woman in Georgia is three to four times as likely to die related to pregnancy and childbirth than her White sisters nationally. If you are a Black woman in Georgia, you are three to four times more likely to die even when you have the insurance, even when you have the income.
Now, what happens if you have a Federal Government that doesn't even allow you to report those disparities? How do you address them?
Shockingly, 89 percent of maternal deaths in Georgia are preventable. But these numbers represent women and their families, and they are more than statistics.
When I think about our maternal mortality crisis, I think of Kira Johnson, a 39-year-old woman who flew planes and ran marathons and spoke several languages. More importantly, she was a human being.
On April 12, 2016, Kira Johnson checked into a hospital with her husband Charles to give birth to their second child, Langston. Kira never returned home alive. She was literally lying on a hospital bed begging for care. She died from a hemorrhage approximately 12 hours after delivering Langston.
Kira deserved better, and so did Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, and so do the mothers across the United States who are dying at disproportionately higher rates than other developed nations. Yet this administration is working to make a preventable crisis worse by gagging the Agencies tasked with helping medical professionals keep mothers alive.
So for Georgia's incredibly dedicated scientists, researchers, and medical professionals; for Kira Johnson, Amber Thurman, Candi Miller, and their grieving families; for the thousands of women who died preventable deaths surrounding their pregnancies, I am voting no on Mr. Kennedy's nomination for HHS Secretary.
Finally--and nobody believes a preacher when he says ``finally''--I am going to get out of the way so my colleague Mr. Welch from the great State of Vermont can continue this work. But, you know, the sad irony of this moment in which we are seeing an onslaught on anything that relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion, the sad irony of this attack on DEI is that the Trump administration, while attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion, is nominating a manifestly unqualified person to run the Department of Health and Human Services. So don't lecture me on diversity, equity, and inclusion and the virtues of a meritocracy while putting up the most unqualified person anybody can imagine to be in charge of the Nation's public health system.
At the end of the day, Mr. Kennedy is a hazard to our health. He is a rubberstamp for the agenda to raise your healthcare costs so that they can line the pockets of their wealthy friends. He is busy chasing conspiracy theories, but he will spend no time chasing solutions to lower our healthcare costs. He apparently sees no problem gagging the CDC, even at the risk of raising egg costs, slowing cancer research, and exacerbating our shameful maternal mortality rates.
So for Cassie Cox, for Heather Payne, for Atlanta's CDC employees, in memory of Kira Johnson and thousands of women who died of preventable maternal deaths, I am voting no on Robert F. Kennedy's nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. I call on all of my colleagues to join me in saying yes to our constituents and no to Robert Kennedy.
Madam President, I am here to follow my colleague from Georgia Senator Warnock to talk about the Robert Kennedy nomination. But before I start, I just want to share some good news I just learned about with the success of DOGE.
As we all know, Mr. Musk is working hard to slash costs, sending out emails to people telling them they don't have to show up to work tomorrow, firing inspectors general--all in pursuit of a smaller government at whatever the cost to a lot of folks around.
But busy as Mr. Musk is, he found time--he found time--with Tesla to sign a $400 million contract to provide Tesla Cybertrucks as transportation for the State Department. So it is a tribute to Mr. Musk that he was able to take a little bit of time out of his worthy full- time job of cutting costs, cutting positions, and ``saving the taxpayers money''--that he was able to find an opportunity to sign this $400 million deal for his company, Tesla.
Madam President, turning back to the topic at hand--a serious question for all of us. The Health and Human Services Secretary plays a vital role in the well-being of every citizen in this country and is extraordinarily powerful in every respect. It has to do with science, medical research, cancer cures. It has to do with the delivery of healthcare and trying to deal with the very complex and very expensive healthcare system we have. It has to do with trying to create priorities for the administration of our healthcare system.
I think all of us, every single one of us, takes very seriously the advice and consent constitutional responsibility that we have when it comes to voting on a Presidential nominee.
I start out with the proposition that a newly elected President is entitled to the benefit of the doubt, so my beginning position is my hope that I can be supportive. But saying that I want to
So how do we decide--or at least I will say how do I decide about a yes or no? It is three matters for me. One is character, one is competence, and one is their priorities. So character, competence, and priorities.
Now, character is a difficult issue to assess, and I think all of us are reserved when it comes to making an opinion or judgment on the character of another person. There are a lot of reasons anyone does whatever it is they do, and all of us have mistakes that we have made along the way. But difficult as it is, that is a factor that I believe a U.S. Senator has to take into account, exercising her or his best judgment about the character qualifications of the person who is presented to us.
So rather than go through my own reading and assessment of Mr. Kennedy's character, I want to read a letter from his cousin Caroline Kennedy, who has known him all his life.
You know, it was a painful letter for her to write. She videotaped it as well. But it was a letter that, out of great sincerity and a great sense of concern about the well-being and the healthcare of the citizens of this country, she felt obligated to share.
She is a very private person. Her family, as we all know, has suffered great loss and provided great service. She lost her father. She lost her uncle. She lost her other uncle. There has been a lot of hardship that has been reported for many of the Kennedys.
I am happy to be a great admirer of the family. I am from Massachusetts. John F. Kennedy was somebody who inspired me to think about going into politics and public service.
I say that by way of introduction because this letter that Caroline Kennedy sent to Senator Crapo, the Finance Committee chair, and Senator Wyden, the ranking member, and Senator Cassidy and Senator Sanders, the chair and ranking member of the HELP Committee, was clearly hard to write but heartfelt and, as I said earlier, reflected a deep and abiding commitment that she felt to provide relevant information to those of us who have to take a vote on Mr. Kennedy. Let me read her letter:
That is a hard letter for her to have written, a hard letter for me to have read. But a person who has known him all his life, who admires his capacity ultimately to kick the heroin addiction that he had, has expressed very clearly questions about his character.
Now, why is that important?
You need a steady hand to run a major Agency with the awesome responsibility of the healthcare and well-being of the people of this country. That is a hard thing to do. It is very stressful. And that history that was recounted by Caroline Kennedy certainly raises major questions about the suitability of Mr. Kennedy to assume the responsibility of Health and Human Services Secretary.
The second question is competence. Competence has to do with what your experience is, what your training is, what your managerial capacities are.
What Mr. Kennedy said is that he wants to be a disrupter in the healthcare system. I am in favor of a disrupter. We need change. I don't want a destroyer. And Robert Kennedy does not have the temperament or the capacity or the competence to be merely a disrupter and a builder, but to be a destroyer.
Competence--you know the obvious things: He is not a doctor. He is not a scientist. He is not a public health expert or someone who has led a complex organization like HHS or a private major organization that requires extraordinary managerial skills.
He has built a career--we have a debate about this, but I come down clearly on the side that his career is built on misinformation. And it is misinformation in healthcare.
And, by the way, one of the things that is so tough: If you are a mother, if you are a father, and you have a partner or you have a son or a daughter who is really seriously sick, you will do anything--you will mortgage your house, you will liquidate your retirement account, you will do anything and everything you can--for the well-being of that child or that loved one. You will do it. But also, if you have a person you love who is diagnosed with a fatal illness, you also are really vulnerable to folks who tell you there is an easy way out, a magic therapy, a special doctor in South America. You
My view: Robert Kennedy has spent his considerable talent promoting misinformation to vulnerable people who have motives we all have, and that is the well-being of people we love.
Some of the things that Mr. Kennedy said when he was attacking vaccines, they are not based at all on science, but they appeal to people's distrust of the standard medical profession.
Kennedy made anti-Semitic remarks about COVID-19, saying that the pandemic was ethnically targeted to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. I mean, what is that about?
His anti-vax work in Samoa contributed to a measles outbreak in 2019, and 83 people--mostly children--died.
Kennedy falsely claimed 5G internet causes radiation sickness and DNA damage. You know, some people believe this. They saw it on the internet. He is promoting it using the magic of the Kennedy name, the credibility that comes from being a member of one of the most storied political families in the history of our country.
Kennedy doesn't understand what HIV/AIDS is and has espoused homophobic and racist views on HIV/AIDS. He has said it is ``undeniable that African AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS.'' Kennedy has also pushed a false theory that AIDS is really chronic fatigue syndrome.
And Kennedy said it is antidepressants, not guns, that lead to more mass shootings and has said Big Pharma's influence over the NIH stopped him from researching mass shootings.
When I think about how did he come to be the nominee, it is relevant because it obviously isn't on the basis of his scientific knowledge, his skill at running a major organization, the healthcare research that he has done. It was political.
He ran for President in the Democratic primary. He lost badly, made no progress, selected his Vice Presidential candidate on the basis of her capacity to write checks and keep the campaign going. It blew up nevertheless, and he went, hat in hand, to Candidate Trump, who was leading by far on the Republican side--pretty much uncontested--and begged for a job in exchange for Kennedy's political support. President Trump--then-Candidate Trump--told Kennedy: You could be HHS Secretary.
And here he is. So that is hardly the resume to inspire confidence that he will be good at the job. He was good at ingratiating himself to President Trump, but that is not confidence for me that he will be good at securing the health and well-being of this country.
Interestingly enough, one of the things that President Trump did in his first term that I have great respect for is Operation Warp Speed. We were in COVID. A lot of things President Trump did, I think, were bad, but I am going to talk about something he did that was really good. We needed a vaccine. We all remember back then. We knew COVID was deadly. We were all terrified that somebody or a family member, a friend, would contract the virus.
We didn't know how it was spreading. There was even a time when, if you got your groceries, you were supposed to leave your bag outside. We just didn't know, and we were trying to figure it out. But what we did all know is that what would give us security and safety was a vaccine, and we didn't have one.
Operation Warp Speed was a commitment by the Federal Government to put up money in advance to help facilitate research and put up money in advance to build production capacity for a yet-to-be-invented vaccine.
So what happened with Operation Warp Speed was the combination of Federal money going into pharmaceutical companies that devoted their scientific expertise and medical expertise to finding a vaccine, and they found it.
Then, when they found it, we didn't start building the manufacturing capacity; we had it in place. That was a risk because we didn't know we would get the vaccine. We didn't know if it would work or it wouldn't. But the Trump administration made a commitment to be ready the moment that vaccine was found, and as a result of that, we were able to get the vaccines out to millions of people way before, in the absence of Operation Warp Speed, it would have been delivered. That is an achievement.
Robert Kennedy, 6 months after the vaccine was out and hundreds of millions of lives were being saved, said it was a disaster. He condemned it. So how is it, even in the face of this almost miraculous discovery, creation, and then delivery of this vaccine and hundreds of thousands of lives saved and a restoration of some sense of security even though we had a long way to go, that Mr. Kennedy condemned the scientific breakthrough that led to the saving of lives of people in the Presiding Officer's State and in mine?
So it just bewilders me that a person is so rash and so rejects not only science but life experience in this country where Operation Warp Speed helped us get that vaccine created and distributed. That is pretty strange.
You know, other things that Mr. Kennedy has said about vaccines--and this really is serious, you know, because we are having debates about these things, and people don't have confidence. The more we undercut their confidence in vaccines--will they get vaccinated for polio? Will they get vaccinated for measles? Will they get vaccinated for COVID? The more you undercut that with specious claims, the more resistance there is for us having the confidence we need as a society to make a decision about how to proceed.
But Robert Kennedy, some of the things he did--he falsely claims that vaccines caused autism. He falsely claims that vaccines cause autoimmune diseases, develop disorders and allergies. He claims vaccines can cause rare childhood cancers. He claimed that the Spanish flu came from vaccine research--no evidence in the world for that--and called COVID shots ``a crime against humanity.'' He claimed the COVID vaccine was a conspiracy against Black communities. He raised a lot of money off anti-vaccine propaganda films.
He went to Samoa, as others have said, to amplify anti-vaccine voices and contributed to a measles outbreak, and that measles outbreak killed 83 people.
As my colleague from Georgia mentioned, he compared COVID policies with Nazi testing programs. He compared vaccination requirements to Nazi experimentation. He claimed pesticides make people trans. He claimed HIV does not cause AIDS. You know, a couple of things that--he claimed fluoride causes diseases and claimed that 5G internet causes radiation sickness and DNA damage.
That is not a person I think that we can trust to build up science, build up the credibility of good science, and make decisions about allocation of research. It is just a person--I don't know how to describe it--it is just a conspiracy-minded person who comes up with the conspiracy of the day to challenge anything that is out there to advance his interests.
You know, the other priorities--and this is where, on how best to improve our healthcare system, there is going to be debate, and there always is within the Democratic caucus, oftentimes within the Republican conference, and certainly across the aisle.
I was a strong supporter of ObamaCare, and my Republican colleagues in the House at that time were united in their opposition. It passed really with the vote of Senator McCain here in the Senate, and the debate never ended.
When I was in the House after ObamaCare was passed and the Republicans took the majority, it seemed like every vote was about repealing the healthcare bill. But finally that is behind us. It has been accepted, but it is not necessarily guaranteed. In fact, we have to make a lot of improvement.
But the priorities that I am hearing from the Trump administration, which would be carried out by the Health and Human Services Secretary, are very disturbing to me and would be very, very harmful to Vermont.
There are dramatic cuts in the Medicaid budget. Medicaid helps low- income kids. It really is also the lifeline for our seniors who need nursing home care. Medicaid in Vermont--194,000 or 30 percent of Vermonters could potentially be impacted by the administration's cuts to Medicaid and health insurance, tax credits, and assistance.
By the way, we have real affordability challenges in Vermont. One of our big affordability challenges--we have very high property taxes and one of the highest income taxes in the country, but the property taxes are brutal on local property owners and homeowners.
If those cuts occur, as is being proposed by the Trump administration and would be advocated by Mr. Kennedy, that is a $113 million hole in the Vermont State budget. What do they do? Does the State go to local property tax payers to try to make up the difference? Not possible. Not sustainable.
You know, three proposals would dramatically reduce Federal funding for Medicaid--block grants, per capita caps, and reducing Medicaid matching rates. All of that has immediate and detrimental impact on our budget.
Currently, the Federal Government pays between 50 percent and 77 percent of Medicaid costs and more for certain high-value services. The administration proposals to slash billions in Federal funding from Medicaid, as I mentioned, would really strain our budgets.
The programs we have that would really be affected include Dr. Dinosaur. It provides low-cost or free healthcare for Vermont's children and teenagers under the age of 19, and it also provides healthcare for pregnant women, which is so tremendous, women who are pregnant getting healthcare and then after the baby is delivered, care then. That is such a critical time in their life and in the child's life. We are going to keep that, not diminish it.
Vermont Medicaid has a prescription cost assistance program that helps uninsured and those enrolled in Medicare with help on their drug costs and long-term care services for seniors. We want to keep these. We want to improve it. If there are ways that we can make it more affordable, we want to do that. But we certainly don't want to blow it up.
Vermonters could lose access to substance use treatment or mental health care. Our rural hospitals in Vermont are like rural hospitals in Alabama; they are a lifeline for our communities. They play a very important role in the well-being of communities--not just community health but the local economy. They are under enormous pressure. Doctors there are not being paid what they need to be paid. They do an incredibly good job for folks, but they are really in jeopardy.
I am working with Senator Boozman and others to try to get the reimbursement rates for our community hospitals up to where they can be sustainable. The Kennedy plan would cut that and hurt us.
So the bottom line here for me on the question of any nominee is character, competence, and priorities. And on all three of these, I come up short with respect to Mr. Kennedy. Aside from the fact that we could do better, it is hard in many ways to see how we could do worse.
So I would urge all of my colleagues to consider the consequences of their vote--a vote that would put a person of questionable character, a person of questionable competence, and a person of, I feel, bad priorities at the head of our healthcare system. So I would urge my colleagues to vote no.
Madam President, I want to start by commending my colleague, the Senator from Vermont, Mr. Welch, for his strong argument as to why we should all vote no on the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, and I come to the floor tonight to voice my strong opposition to this nomination.
You know, Mr. Kennedy says that he will always follow the evidence no matter where it leads. Well, if you look at his record, he hasn't done that. But let's apply that guidance and see where it leads when it comes to his own nomination.
First, is he qualified to do the job? That should be the basic threshold question for any nominee to a position such as this. And the short answer is no, but let's now look at the evidence and understand why.
We know that the Department of Health and Human Services manages some of our most critical health programs, like Medicaid, like Medicare.
It does health research that delivers treatments and cures at the National Institutes of Health and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.
At the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, it determines whether or not the drugs we consume are safe and whether they are efficacious-- whether they will actually do what the manufacturers say they will do.
At the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, they disseminate information about pandemics and health risks, and they monitor the risk of outbreaks of disease around the world, especially those diseases that can travel across boundaries and hit the United States.
It helps treat our Nation's substance use crisis at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, known as SAMHSA.
It ensures patient safety in our healthcare systems at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
It runs lifesaving programs like the community health centers, Healthy Start, and the HIV/AIDS care at the Health Resources and Services Administration.
It does all that and more.
HHS also provides quality control for reproductive health services. It ensures that contraceptives are covered under the Affordable Care Act, and it makes sure that Americans can have access to over-the- counter options. HHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, also includes early childhood development programs like Head Start and childcare, programs to help the elderly age in their communities and individuals with disabilities live independently.
But when you look at that wide range of important subjects that HHS covers, Mr. Kennedy has no experience, no qualifications, in the vast majority of that work. Now, I don't think any of us expect that one Secretary of HHS can know everything. But if you monitored the hearings and listened to Mr. Kennedy's answers, you can see that Mr. Kennedy knows virtually nothing about all those important subjects. In fact, he was stunningly unprepared to discuss even the most basic programs at his confirmation hearing.
Most of us, even those of us who are not on Medicare, have some understanding of the program from our parents or grandparents. We have a sense of the basic components of Medicare. Medicare, of course, provides healthcare coverage to 68 million Americans--seniors and people with disabilities. But when Senator Hassan of New Hampshire questioned Mr. Kennedy about those basics, he pretty much got everything wrong. He could not explain the simple components of Medicare, like what covers hospital care and what covers doctor visits?
These are not gotcha questions. These are not tough questions. These are questions that anybody who wants to be Secretary of HHS should understand, because Medicare is one of the biggest and most consequential programs within the jurisdiction of that Department. Knowing the basics, just the basics, should be easy.
So he didn't understand the basics of Medicare. How about Medicaid? Medicaid is another very important health program in our country. It covers nearly 80 million of our fellow Americans, including 37 million children. In my State of Maryland, Medicaid covers 20 percent of our residents--children and families, nursing home residents, pregnant women, and people with disabilities.
At his confirmation hearing, RFK, Jr., complained about Medicaid's ``high premiums and high deductibles,'' even though, as we know, the majority of enrollees in Medicaid don't have any premiums. Medicaid doesn't have high premiums, but what it does have is very high approval ratings.
Mr. Kennedy also erroneously said the Federal Government covers the full cost, when we know that it has been a shared responsibility between the Federal Government and the States. In fact, that has been the matter and subject of lots of debates in the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court. He didn't know that.
So what we see in RFK, Jr., is a demonstration over and over and over
Now, perhaps, some of our Republican colleagues--some of them--don't care so much about his lack of understanding of Medicaid. I have seen a lot of reports in the last couple weeks that House Republicans are planning to make deep cuts to Medicaid as part of a plan to cut taxes for the very, very rich and ask other Americans to pay for them, including Americans on Medicaid. So maybe for some, the fact that Mr. Kennedy is ignorant about Medicaid just doesn't get in the way.
You know, we are debating a budget reconciliation bill here in the U.S. Senate. I serve on the Budget Committee, and today in the Budget Committee, I offered a very simple proposal. I said that as part of this budget reconciliation process, the Senate should not consider--in fact, I made it a point of order--subject to point of order if we did consider--should not consider cuts to Medicare or Medicaid, simple amendment. Let's lay down some guardrails before we debate this reconciliation bill. Unfortunately, not a single one of my Republican colleagues voted for that bill to make sure that we protect Medicare and Medicaid as we go through this reconciliation process. All of my Democratic colleagues voted for it.
Now, it is bad enough that Mr. Kennedy is not qualified for this position--and clearly he is not qualified--but it is worse than that. I mean, there are lots of unqualified people that we might just pick out randomly and say: Let's nominate that person to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and we could just have an unqualified person there.
But with Mr. Kennedy, it is worse than that. He is not only unqualified, putting him in that position will put the public health of Americans at risk. And so that takes this to a whole different and more dangerous level.
And we have heard a lot about this vaccine question, but it really does go to the heart of why he poses a threat to the public health.
Now, he says he will believe us on vaccines ``if you show me the science.''
Well, he should look at the science, and he should talk to the scientists in this country, because in the past 50 years alone, vaccines have saved 154 million lives around the world, including the lives of 100 million infants. Vaccines eradicated polio and eradicated smallpox. They have prevented outbreaks of measles, where they are used, across the majority--great majority--of the population. They have kept recent generations from getting chicken pox, and, yes, they helped lift the world out of the lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic.
So for generations--for generations--America and our Federal health Agencies have helped fuel this progress. More than 60 years ago, an American said:
Colleagues, that person was President John F. Kennedy.
Unfortunately, his nephew, RFK, Jr., has spent decades unraveling that hard-won legacy by spreading lies and conspiracy theories about vaccines. It wasn't that long ago that he spread vaccine conspiracy theories in Samoa, where his misinformation contributed to a measles outbreak that got 83 people killed, mostly infants and children.
We cannot let that happen to children here or others around the world. But, unfortunately, we are already seeing the cost of that misinformation and those conspiracy theories right here in America. Because that misinformation, the kind of misinformation spread by RFK, Jr., has contributed to lower vaccination rates. And, right now, there is a measles outbreak in West Texas that is threatening our children. And it is not the first one we have seen in recent months, and it will not be the last if these conspiracy theories continue to spread.
And we know that it doesn't take much misinformation to make us all vulnerable. Because if vaccination rates drop below 95 percent, in the cases of some diseases, those diseases can spread very rapidly through the population. In fact, for a disease like measles that infects just about everyone exposed, it is disastrous when those vaccination rates fall below 95 percent.
And yet these lies spread by RFK, Jr., are now burrowing themselves into the American consciousness like brain worms. And it will be bad enough if he doesn't become Secretary of HHS, given the damage he has already done, but if he becomes Secretary of HHS, he will have a bully pulpit on which those conspiracy theories can spread even further and even farther and put even more Americans at risk.
Now, once he was confronted with some of these statements that he had made previously, RFK, Jr., started to flip, and he started to flop. In fact, at his confirmation hearings, he insisted that he never meant much of what he said. In fact, he denied having made some statements altogether. He denied making statements that are on tape for everyone to hear them.
As we have heard already, in 2013, he compared the CDC's childhood vaccine program to Nazi death camps, saying:
In 2019, he compared the CDC vaccine program to the pedophile scandal in the Catholic church.
In 2023, he said that COVID-19 ``is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are [most] immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.'' He denied saying that at the hearing.
And this and that and flip and flop, he tried to backtrack the confirmation day conversion, nomination day conversion.
He also, nevertheless, could not prevent himself, could not help himself from citing a discredited study on vaccines and autism and repeatedly refused to tell the truth that peer-reviewed studies have shown that vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism.
So he is not qualified. Worse than that, he poses a danger to the public health, given his conspiracy theories about vaccines.
But let's do what he says he does and let's continue to follow the evidence, because this Nation conducts the best biomedical research in the world. A lot of it comes out of the National Institutes of Health, and I am proud that they have their home in the State of Maryland. Just last year, the NIH research helped develop an accurate blood test for Alzheimer's, a brain-computer interface to help a man with ALS communicate, and a drug to reduce reactions to peanut allergies, all those things last year at NIH.
NIH clinical trials give people hope with novel and hard-to-treat illnesses, including childhood cancer. And yet what we are witnessing in the first 22 days of this Trump administration is an attack on much of that medical research. Right now, at the National Institutes of Health, the Trump administration is wreaking havoc. They have frozen internal meetings. They have pulled down information from data sets from HHS websites. They have denied resources to the public and clinicians.
Thankfully, a Federal court had to step in and stop their refusal to provide the public with important health information, NIH and CDC.
The administration also, early on, took this illegal action in violation of the Impoundment Control Act to stop a lot of Federal grants that had already been appropriated. That also put in jeopardy a lot of NIH research. Again, fortunately a Federal court has intervened and issued a temporary restraining order.
But just in the last 3 or 4 days, we had NIH decide to change entirely the formula for reimbursing institutions that study diseases around the country, and the overwhelming evidence and testimony from the experts said that, by changing those formulas, they will do great damage to important health research in this country.
Again, a Federal judge had to intervene to stop this. We shouldn't have to rely on the courts in order to get the job done for the American people. We certainly aren't going to be able to rely on RFK, Jr., were he to be confirmed.
He poses a threat to that important research that is going on at NIH. In fact, just this past November, he said:
That is RFK, Jr., back in November. And if he doesn't fire you, he still doesn't want to let you do your job. He is on record saying that his plan for NIH is ``giving infectious disease a break for about eight years.''
Madam President, infectious diseases have no plans to give us a break, and we should not be giving them a break. I can say right now that we are seeing avian flu outbreaks across the United States. I am hearing a lot about it, of course, from my farmers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and it is contributing to a huge spike in the price of eggs around the country. Yet, as this headline indicates, the ``Trump administration's communication freeze restricted access to critical bird flu information.'' That is just one story about the effort to shut down information important to our health. And it is our health because if avian flu mutates, it is not just the higher egg prices we have seen; it could start jumping from person to person, and we could see another pandemic. We should never give infectious diseases a break. They will never give us one.
Finally, I want to look at one last dimension of all of this because Mr. Kennedy says to follow the evidence, and the evidence shows that he is unqualified. The evidence shows that he would be actually worse than unqualified; he would pose a risk to the public health of our country.
So it does beg the question of whether he believes all these lies and all this disinformation. Sometimes it is hard to tell because he seems to believe whatever gets him a lot of money and a lot of attention.
Here is the evidence for that. His cousin Caroline Kennedy told the Senate that he ``vaccinates his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.'' So what is good for his family he discourages other families from doing.
During his time at the misnamed Children's Health Defense, which is an anti-vaccine lobbying organization, he made millions of dollars from anti-vax lawsuits. At his hearings, when he was asked to forgo any profits he might gain from those lawsuits even as Secretary of Health and Human Services, at first he said he wouldn't, and then he said, OK, he won't take that profit for himself; he will assign it to his son. He seems to flip and flop with the winds.
When he was working to be a Democrat, he said he was ardently pro- choice. Now he says he believes whatever Donald Trump believes.
He wrote entire books about climate change, but now, with Donald Trump in the White House, he is willing to ``agree to disagree.''
What the evidence shows is that he will not stand up for our public health. We have seen this pattern, of course, with other nominees who get nominated for the positions not because of their qualifications but because of the fact that they bow down to everything that Donald Trump says. We have seen that in nominee after nominee.
While, of course, the President wants people in his Cabinet who are going to follow his guidance, we would also hope that these are people who are qualified and people who don't pose a danger to the country and people who are not just doing this to make money for themselves. And when it comes to that test, again, let's do what Mr. Kennedy says: Let's follow the evidence.
Strike 1, he is not qualified. Strike 2, he is actually a danger to the public health. No. 3, he says things, according to his own cousin, that we are not sure he believes because he doesn't apply the same standard to his own family. He says things to enrich himself even when it puts others at risk.
So I would say strike 1, strike 2, strike 3, he is out, applying his own test of following the evidence. Mr. Kennedy is simply not fit to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. I urge my colleagues to vote no.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I am joining my colleagues on the floor today to raise the alarm about the impact on the people that we serve-- in particular, the most vulnerable people we serve: the frail, elderly, children--with the nomination and soon-confirmation of Robert Kennedy, Jr., to be the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
I don't think it is hyperbole to say that there are very few people in this country that are less qualified to run this Agency than Robert Kennedy, Jr. I say that because there are few people in the country who have been so enthusiastic, so public, and so impactful in their ability to take some of the wildest conspiracy theories that are out there on the internet about our health system or about our kids or about our families, internalize them, and then disseminate them in a way that does great damage.
There is obviously a reputation that comes with being a Kennedy. There is an ability to convince and lead people because when a Kennedy speaks--when a Kennedy speaks--there is an assumption that that comes with authority and grounding in fact. So when Robert Kennedy, Jr., even as a private citizen, has adopted and amplified some of the wildest conspiracy theories out there--most notably, his belief that there is not a single safe vaccine in the United States of America--it has consequences because people listen to the Kennedy family.
But those consequences pale in comparison to the consequences that will be visited upon this country if a conspiracy theorist, someone who throws science out the window--not just a science skeptic; someone who is outright hostile to science--takes over the preeminent public health Agency in this country.
But the danger is even deeper because what is happening throughout our government today is--let's not pull punches--a billionaire takeover. Elon Musk is running the U.S. Government today for all any of us can tell, and Elon Musk is running the government in order to enrich himself.
Today, there is news that he is about to get a major contract for armored Teslas from the White House and news that he is going to personally meet with Prime Minister Modi. His agenda will not be the interests of the people of the United States of America. Elon Musk, as a representative of the White House, is going to sit down with Prime Minister Modi and talk about Tesla's business and Elon Musk's business in China. I mean, you couldn't make this up. You couldn't make this up.
He is doing press conferences in the White House, and then he is leveraging his access to power, his access to the President, his influence over American policy in order to make money for himself.
The same thing is happening at the Department of Health and Human Services.
As we speak, Elon Musk and his lieutenants have access to all of your personal data--your Medicare data, your Medicaid data. They are not in there to try to make the government more efficient; they are in there in order to make money. I don't think that is hard to believe given the fact that it is entirely clear that Elon Musk's involvement in our foreign policy is with a design to make money for himself.
The same thing is happening and will happen in the Department of Health and Human Services.
I want to talk to you for a few minutes tonight about a radical anti- patient, anti-science, and pro-billionaire agenda that will be realized if RFK, Jr., is successfully confirmed by this body. Let me walk you through the RFK policy checklist.
The first thing that we are learning about is that he is going to oversee a gutting of NIH funding. This is a big deal because a massive cut in funding for NIH--well, that is life or death. NIH does the basic research that private pharmaceutical companies need in order to cure and treat diseases. If the NIH can't do research, well then our pharmaceutical companies can't build on that research to cure diseases.
So what has happened already that RFK, Jr., has pledged to implement is one of the biggest cuts to NIH that we have witnessed in modern history. It is done under the disguise of efficiency because the cut is supposedly about reducing the administrative expenses in research. But anybody that has ever been in a lab will tell you that there is really a distinction with no difference between direct and indirect costs. You
For instance, these are the things that would be categorized as indirect expenses. That is what is being limited by the order that RFK, Jr., is going to implement at the Department of Health and Human Services.
MRI machines that can measure whether a cancer treatment is working or not--that is an indirect expense, the equipment that determines whether the treatment that is being researched is working or not.
Payment for specialized research assistance that analyzes the clinical data that comes out of research, like blood samples--so the human beings that analyze the data. That is an indirect expense, and that is all of a sudden going to be limited by this Executive order.
Staff that monitor patients who are in clinical trials for adverse reactions--those people are apparently indirect expenses. You are going to have less people monitoring you for adverse reactions--maybe no people monitoring you for adverse events and reactions because those staff are deemed an indirect expense.
Advanced microscopes that are used to examine genetic alterations within, for instance, a tumor tissue--critical to studying cancer development and progression. Those advanced microscopes are, according to the Trump administration, an indirect expense, and thus funding will be limited or eliminated.
At the University of Connecticut, the estimate is that they would lose $165 million per year as a result of this new policy that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is going to enthusiastically embrace. The University of Connecticut tells me that it would mean that they would close labs, entire labs; that they would have fewer discoveries; that they would do fewer patient trials; and there would be major delays even on the projects that they would continue, meaning that some people will die unnecessarily, waiting for those cures and therapies to be developed.
OK. Well, you could say that you shouldn't hold the incoming Secretary of Health and Human Services to account for a policy, but here is the problem: This isn't just a bad idea; it is illegal. It is illegal. Congress specified very specifically in statute how money would flow to research institutions. In fact, we were very prescriptive in limiting the ability of any President to be able to unilaterally reduce the amount of money that goes for things like indirect expenses.
I am not going to vote for any nominee who is willingly going to implement an illegal order. What you are watching is an extraordinary seizure of power from the people by the executive branch.
The reason spending power in article I is vested in the legislature is because, here in the legislature, in the Congress, we represent every political party, every political faction, every part of the country. So, when we come to a decision on how the taxpayers' money is spent, we have to, by definition, come to an agreement that spreads that money out amongst people from every part of the country--people represented by both Republicans and Democrats. That means that the money is spent fairly. If the President of the United States gets to have unilateral decision-making authority over where money gets spent, it becomes a fundamental, unconstitutional corruption because the President can then just decide to spend money only on his friends and to hurt his enemies.
So I am not going to support any nominee, including RFK, Jr., who is taking jobs with the explicit promise that they are going to implement illegal, unconstitutional orders. And the Executive order to destroy NIH funding is just that.
Listen, people rely on this research. People rely on this research. People will die if this research is delayed or if labs at the University of Connecticut or at the University of North Carolina or at the University of Wisconsin close. There is no consensus out there in America to destroy medical research. Nobody voted for Donald Trump to stop cancer research or juvenile diabetes research. So, when I say that there is an anti-patient--a radical anti-patient--agenda, I want to start with this plan to illegally gut NIH funding because that is anti- patient, and it is radical because the American public does not support it.
I know my colleagues have spent a lot of time talking about RFK, Jr.'s efforts to undermine vaccines, but I just think it is worth it to, once again, read into the Record some of the things that he has said, because it was stunning to me. I am a member of the HELP Committee. I listened to the testimony of Mr. Kennedy, and he said: I am not anti-vaccine.
Yet let's just remind our colleagues of what he has said.
He called the COVID vaccine a ``crime against humanity.''
He said that taking the vaccine would ``increase [your] risk of [getting] COVID.''
He said the COVID vaccines ``may have contaminated the country's blood supply.''
He described the HPV vaccine as ``dangerous and defective. . . . With this level of risk, it would seem that no loving parents would [ever] allow their daughter to receive this vaccine.''
He said that the polio vaccine may have led to the increase in cancer.
He wrote that the measles vaccine ``instead of protecting children, not only delays onset of disease to later age cohorts but has the potential to cause serious and permanent injury.''
He wrote that the tetanus vaccine ``makes children more susceptible to dying from other causes.''
He stated:
And, most famously, he stated:
Yet he has the gall to come before the HELP Committee and say that he is not anti-vaccine. That is like somebody who sets fire to a building every single day and claims that he is not an arsonist.
There is danger--danger--in creating an impression that vaccines are unsafe, that vaccines cause autism. It has been debunked. There is such a thing as truth in this country. There is scientific consensus. I am not saying that we shouldn't question science, but there are questions that have been settled, and it has been settled that vaccines are not just safe but are essential for the preservation of the health of our children.
Third, I want to talk about these attacks on the FDA.
Mr. Kennedy said:
Now, listen. I don't think there is a single Senator here who would say that we shouldn't be having a conversation about FDA reform, about making sure the system works better. But there is a draft Executive order out there, apparently, that has been reported on that talks about halving the staff at the FDA, and you are literally about to confirm somebody who says that everybody at the FDA should pack their bags. That sounds like somebody who is going to enthusiastically shut down or, at the very least, neuter the FDA.
Now, I talked about what this means at the outset. This is both anti- patient and pro-billionaire. It is anti-patient because--well, I didn't even check ``anti-patient.'' Well, it is absolutely anti-patient. It is anti-patient because, if you halve the staff at the FDA, you are just going to get fewer drugs and therapies approved as quickly. That is clear. So, ultimately, patients are going to be hurt.
But it is pro-billionaire because, once you shrink the resources, it is up to the administration as to who gets the access to the regulatory system and who doesn't. So, if you are a billionaire who is friendly to Donald Trump or if you are a pharmaceutical company that is friendly, you might get that access.
But here is the other thing that happens when it is harder for science to dictate what drugs and therapies ultimately end up in the hands of consumers: It allows the snake oil salesmen--the people who are peddling the snake oil cures, the unproven cures--it allows them to gain a foothold because there are fewer actual proven drugs and therapies that are moving through the pipeline. So the unproven, unregulated drugs get a leg up.
I am just going to show you one other chart here. It is kind of extraordinary how many people who are coming into the administration or who are
This vita gummy scam--the Surgeon General nominee is hawking these vita gummies. Mehmet Oz, who is going to be Director of CMS, is hawking what he calls miracle drugs--unregulated drugs and supplements. Alex Jones, who is a big Trump supporter, is hawking Super Male Vitality serum. The guy in line to be the next FBI Director is making money online by selling something called vaccine reversal pills.
Let me say that again. Kash Patel, who is about to be voted on here to run the FBI, is making money online by selling something called vaccine reversal pills.
So, when you curtail the ability of the FDA to be able to regulate and to be able to move legitimate drugs through the process, you are benefiting the people who are hawking the unregulated, often charlatan drugs, and I don't know that it is coincidental that a lot of those people are either close to Donald Trump or are getting jobs in the Trump administration.
One, two, three, four. The fourth thing I want to talk about is the erasure of public health data.
So this is a big deal. Researchers, clinicians, doctors--they rely on data that is posted on the CDC's and FDA's web pages. There is really important data on those web pages, but because of these Executive orders that have mandated that Agencies scrub anything, for instance, that refers to terms like ``sex'' or ``gender,'' the CDC and FDA have taken offline numerous web pages and datasets, including recommendations on how physicians should treat sexually transmitted infections. Why? Because I guess the word ``sex'' is in the word ``sexually'' transmitted infections. So the attack on science and the attack on patients includes the erasure of public health data that our clinicians rely on.
RFK, Jr., has made no commitment that he would put that data back online. This crazy, insane assault on what they call DEI means that, if you have done research on anything with the word ``sex'' in it, like in sexually transmitted infections, apparently, your research is no good. That is wild. But RFK, Jr., is, apparently, going to implement the destruction of basic public health data that has anything to do with gender or sex. That is radical. That is anti-patient.
Let me talk to you about one particular conspiracy theory because it just matters to me greatly, and this one is both anti-patient and pro- billionaire.
So Robert Kennedy has lots of really wild, really dangerous ideas, but one of them is that treating kids for depression--treating kids for depression--is what has caused school shootings in this country.
He said on a talk show.
So what he is saying is that it is not the number of guns that are out there, and it is not the assault weapons. It is the fact that we are trying to humanely treat children for mental illness.
He also says:
That is totally inaccurate. That is totally inaccurate. So, as somebody who has spent their career working to protect kids from gun violence and who believes that gun violence is a public health issue, it is heartbreaking and unacceptable to me that we are about to nominate a candidate to lead the preeminent public health Agency, not just in the United States but in the world, who believes that guns are not the primary cause of school shootings but that antidepressants are. There is zero evidence of that fact--zero evidence of that fact.
That should be offensive to every parent in this country who may not know exactly how we solve the problem of school shootings in this country but who certainly knows that the problem is not that we are treating kids for mental illness.
I want to talk about two last important elements on RFK, Jr.'s policy checklist.
The first--and I have referred to this throughout my remarks--is this idea that you are going to have to take a loyalty pledge to the President and his political agenda in order to receive funding. This is that DEI Executive order that says that they are going to end radical and wasteful government DEI programs. They say, if your research program has anything to do with environmental justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, sex, or gender, that they are going to cease funding your program.
Now, once again, that is illegal. The President cannot--cannot--apply additional conditions to grant programs authorized by Congress beyond those that are explicitly authorized by Congress. Sometimes, the President has some wiggle room, some ability to make decisions that apply extra conditions, but Congress has not given the President the ability to issue an order as wide and as broad and as vague as this. Nobody out there in the medical research field has any idea what this means. They have no idea whether they are running a DEI research program or not. So what it allows for is another fundamental corruption for the Department of Health and Human Services to just decide, inside a closed, walled-off room, what is DEI and what is not.
I just speculate that there is probably going to be a whole bunch more DEI research programs in Oregon and Connecticut than there would be in Mississippi or Texas. It is just another way to move money away from people who may not line up with your political ideology or your political agenda as a President and hand it to your loyalists and to the people who are with you.
Then, finally, I will just come back to one of the places that I started. Elon Musk and his billionaire crowd--they are inside the Department of Health and Human Services right now. Right now, an unaccountable billionaire who didn't get elected to anything has access to your most intimate personal information--your Medicare records. Whether you have seen a doctor, whether you have had a surgery, whether you have gotten treatment for mental illness or addiction, Elon Musk, an unaccountable billionaire, the richest man in the world, has access to that data.
Maybe we aren't certain what Elon Musk is going to do with all of that data--by the way, he apparently has access to your Treasury data, to your tax records, and to your Social Security information as well-- but RFK, Jr., is not going to stop that. He is not going to stop an unaccountable billionaire from having access to some of the most sensitive data that exists--your health records.
Elon Musk is interested in having access to this data in part because it gives him a competitive edge over the folks that he is trying to win business against.
So any way you cut it, Robert Kennedy's agenda for the Department of Health and Human Services is anti-patient, and it is pro-billionaire. Gutting NIH funding, undermining vaccines, attacking the FDA, erasing public health data, blaming shootings on antidepressants--by the way, that is pro-billionaire because guess who gets helped when guns aren't the problem; it is the wealthy, rich owners of the gun companies--using this vaguely termed notion of DEI to force people to pledge loyalty to Donald Trump in order to receive Federal funds and then giving Elon Musk and his friends access to very sensitive health records.
I know a lot of my Republican friends know in their hearts that this is a very dangerous choice, and I am very sad for this body that on this nomination that so clearly implicates one of the most sacred responsibilities of the U.S. Congress--the protection of the health and welfare of our children, of our families--that we weren't able to find a way to tell President Trump: Pick somebody else. Pick somebody else. Find somebody who isn't so enthusiastically going to gut funding for research. Find somebody who doesn't show such affection for conspiracy theories. Find somebody who doesn't blame shootings on treating kids for mental illness.
There are a lot of really conservative healthcare leaders out there, a lot of
There is still time for my Republican colleagues to join us and send a message that loyalty to the people of this country and a commitment to protecting the healthcare of this country matters more than loyalty to President Trump.
Mr. President, my colleague from Connecticut is here past midnight. Why is he here past midnight? Because the health and welfare of our children and our families are at stake. That is why I am here, too--because it matters. It matters that you have someone in charge of Health and Human Services who has some at least basic understanding of the issues and basic experience managing a Department or managing an organization. But the candidate, the nominee, RFK, Jr., fails--fails on experience, fails on ethics, fails on qualifications. I must say the diagnosis is grim in each of these three areas.
Let's talk a little about his experience running an agency or his medical experience. In fact, when Mr. Kennedy was asked during his confirmation hearings about some of the Agencies he would oversee, he got his facts completely wrong about just the core basics--about Medicare, a critical healthcare program for seniors throughout our Nation.
It has these parts--A, B, and C--and people in the medical world all know every detail about this. When he was asked about it, he kind of just guessed, and he said: Well, Part A covers primary care, Part B covers physicians, and Part C is a full menu of healthcare services.
Well, not even close--not even close. Part A covers inpatient hospital services; part B, outpatient and home health services; and Part C, Medicare Advantage. I don't know if he could have explained what Medicare Advantage is.
Everyone who works in the field of providing healthcare through Medicare understands these core, basic foundations, as well as lots of other details.
Senator Cassidy talked about another piece of the healthcare puzzle. We have Medicare. We also have Medicaid. Medicaid in Oregon is the Oregon Health Plan. It provides healthcare to families who are struggling, who are not yet fully into the middle class.
He said that all of Medicaid is fully paid by the Federal Government. No. No, it is not. In fact, in Oregon, the State picks up two-fifths of the tab, and there are different categories and different ratios.
Maybe one could say that these details--one doesn't need to know every aspect of it, but the architecture of our healthcare system, the basic architecture, just the simplest, most fundamental pieces, he has no idea about.
These are incredibly important programs in our States, Medicare and Medicaid. Forty-four percent of the births in Oregon are covered by Medicaid.
You know, Oregon is a very rural State. We have some big cities, but we have a lot of rural areas. Medicaid coverage rates are higher in rural areas because incomes are lower and more people qualify.
Medicaid is incredibly important in the counties that are very rural in my State. In my 36 counties, a good two-thirds of them or three- fourths of them would be considered extremely rural.
It is important to people in rural America that you have a leader who understands and cares about the healthcare program for rural America, but that individual is not RFK, Jr.
Not only that, it is vital that the Health and Human Services Secretary understands which ideas don't work.
Once again, our Republican colleagues are pushing to impose work requirements on Medicaid enrollees. Now, every developed country but the United States fully backs the idea that healthcare is a right. It is not a privilege that comes out of your wealth. They understand that in order to be able to work, you have to have healthcare so you can be well enough to work. That is every other country. But here, the elite across the aisle only want healthcare for the rich. They want to cut down Medicaid. They want poor people to struggle and never be able to get wealth so they can never get a job so they can keep talking about how lazy people are. Well, that is just absurd and wrong in every possible way.
Ninety-one percent of Medicaid enrollees who aren't disabled are either employed, in school, or caring for family members. Yet, every few years, my colleagues across the aisle trot out this myth, and every few years, it gets debunked, and then they bring it back. Just in a cycle, like sunspots or something, it comes around every few years.
We actually have facts on what has happened when this misbegotten idea is undertaken.
In 2018, when Arkansas implemented new work requirements during the first Trump administration, to maintain their health insurance, Arkansas Medicaid enrollees had to fill out a mountain of paperwork every month. Many of these folks worked part time. Many worked hourly jobs. Some worked several jobs to make ends meet. Not surprisingly, it is very hard, when you are struggling with making multiple jobs fit, to have the time to do massive paperwork all the time. They are working their jobs, and they are taking care of their families.
So what happened? Other Medicaid enrollees were working but could not reliably meet the required number of hours given the normal fluctuations of low-wage and hourly work. If you ever, ever have lived in a blue-collar community--and I live in a blue-collar community-- people who are patching together various part-time jobs--the managers change the schedules continuously. So now your schedule for one job conflicts with the schedule for the other job.
Anyway, it is very stressful and it is very challenging to be getting minimum wage or near minimum wage and conflicting schedules and managers changing those schedules and still trying to deal with raising kids and being there when you need to be there.
Roughly 18,000 people lost health insurance in Arkansas before a Federal judge halted the new work requirements for violating the intended purpose of the Medicaid Program.
Well, there was another State that tried this out--Georgia. They implemented work requirements in 2023. Not wanting their work requirements to be struck down by the courts, Georgia lawmakers lowered the requirements for Medicaid enrollment, thereby technically expanding coverage to fulfill the purpose of the program.
In doing so, the State of Georgia estimated that another 175,000 people would enroll in the program. They estimated 175,000, and only 6,500 people enrolled. The State of Georgia spent $60 million in administrative fees tracking compliance with the work requirements--$60 million; 6,500 people; $10,000 for a Medicaid enrollee in Georgia just on administrative overhead, not providing healthcare. The costs just kept piling up.
Uninsured people still need to see a doctor, but instead of seeing their doctor and getting care early, uninsured people wait to get care until they wind up in the emergency rooms.
There is an old but accurate saying: ``An uninsured patient is the most expensive patient.'' So anyone with half a brain would want people to be insured. They will get care earlier. They don't end up in the emergency room. It will save money. People are healthier. They are more likely to work. And it costs less. It is a win-win on every level.
Well, if you strike down the support for Medicaid here, States have to figure out if they can pick up the difference. Picking up the difference means they have to wrestle with whether to raise taxes.
Why do my colleagues across the aisle in other States have to raise taxes to provide basic healthcare?
Oh, my goodness, yeah, impose that burden on families trying to get on their feet and be able to thrive.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, every Medicaid dollar spent today reduces future deficits by $2. That is a pretty good return. That is an investment we can't afford not to make. And the loss of Medicaid coverage hits rural communities particularly hard.
As I have noted, most of my home State is rural. A couple of weeks ago,
But when Medicaid was expanded, when Oregon seized that opportunity, a lot of patients who were never able to pay a bill could now pay the bill because they had insurance, and that meant a much stronger foundation for rural healthcare. Don't we want a stronger foundation for rural healthcare?
It is critical to have a Secretary for Health and Human Services who understands these issues, and that individual is not RFK, Jr.
He is, however, something else: one of the world's best-known purveyors of conspiracy theories about the alleged harm that comes from effective vaccines. That is, he is a conspiracy theorist who says these effective vaccines that everyone else knows are effective, he is going to tell you something different. He is going to tell you that HPV and measles and tetanus and flu and polio and chickenpox vaccines don't work.
His conspiracy theories have been debunked time and time again. They have been repudiated time and time again, including the big one--and that is that vaccines cause autism. This is a straightforward thing that has been studied time and time and time again. And it is a powerful conspiracy theory if you happen to have a child who has autism and if it starts appearing about the same time that you are giving a lot of childhood vaccines. You could believe that maybe that is the cause. So it has been studied time and time again in children who have vaccines, who don't have vaccines. The vaccines do not cause autism.
And yet, what has he done? He says: I believe autism comes from vaccines.
In the middle of a 2017 measles outbreak in Minnesota's Somali- American community, he falsely told parents the following:
He also falsely claimed that the global decline in measles was caused by ``nutrition and clean water,'' not the measles vaccine, and that children in California were getting measles ``from the vaccine or . . . from somebody who got the vaccine.''
In other words, he stood it on its head and said those who are getting sick--who are getting sick because they did not have the vaccine--were getting sick because they had the vaccine.
All of this misinformation does real harm.
He even raised doubt over flu shots, claiming that ``there is zero evidence that the flu shot prevents any hospitalizations or any deaths.'' This is completely untrue. This is wrong. A lot of people in America die every year from the flu, so this has been extensively studied.
Now, I didn't get flu shots until the COVID epidemic came and my wife, who was a nurse, said: While you are getting that COVID shot, get your flu shot. I had never gotten a flu shot before. I never worried about it. I didn't think about it. It never occurred to me. Lots of people didn't. So it was very easy to study those who get flu shots and those who don't.
And what RFK, Jr., did was not be honest with people--in fact, to tell people information he undoubtedly knew was untrue. And the result is more people get sick, more people die.
Finally, Kennedy also referred to the COVID vaccine as ``the deadliest vaccine ever made.'' Well, we know how many people were dying before we had the COVID vaccine, and we now know how much safer things are. We are not sitting here on the floor tonight with a mask over our face. Our accompanying staff do not have masks over their face. The folks in the elevator today didn't have a mask because the threat of COVID has receded because we have a COVID vaccine.
This misinformation isn't just some harmless fun. These conspiracy theories are not some harmless fun. They do real harm. They do real harm.
I want to read to you a letter from Josh Green. He is the current Governor of Hawaii, and he is a physician. He wrote the following. I am going to quote it extensively:
He goes on to say--the Governor of Hawaii, current Governor, a physician:
This is the Governor now--
That is the letter from the Governor of Hawaii, also a physician, who went on an emergency medical trip to Samoa and witnessed firsthand people--children--dying because of the lies from RFK, Jr.
That is not a person you bring in to lead your healthcare system, and every one of my colleagues across the aisle knows it. They know they are hurting people by putting him into this office.
So I ask them: Rethink your responsibility to serve the people of the United States. That is your responsibility as a Member of this U.S. Senate. You have constituents in your home State. The President is not your constituent. The President has platinum-plated healthcare. We are not worried about the President getting the best healthcare. We are concerned about our constituents.
I could tell you a lot more because I have a lot of information here. My colleague from California is here, and I am looking in his direction to see if he is ready to speak. If he is, I am going to wrap up.
I am particularly struck by the letter written to us by Caroline Kennedy, first cousin to RFK, Jr. I will just summarize it and say, it is not complimentary. She says in the most dramatic terms that we are making a massive mistake to put him in charge; that he has served his wallet, he has served without ethics, he has served in a way that has hurt people time and time again, and he does not belong in office.
Mr. President, we are here, as my colleague was before me, Chris Murphy from Connecticut, as my colleague from California is now--we are all here after midnight. We are here after midnight because this matters, because more people will suffer and die across this country, more children will die because of the incompetence and the full lack of ethics of the individual being considered to head up our healthcare system.
Let's not make this mistake when we vote on his final nomination.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, today, we consider the nomination of RFK, Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
In a time when science has given us the tools to extend life, to eradicate disease, to protect the most vulnerable among us, this body is being asked to confirm a man who has dedicated the better part of his career to attacking science.
But the debate over RFK, Jr., and his anti-science agenda does not take place in isolation. It is part of a broader and far more reaching and destructive agenda. It is part of an effort to dismantle public services, to strip away all the country's resources, to defund the Department of Health and Human Services, to take away from those who have little and hand it to those who have everything.
So this is not just about RFK, Jr.; it is about every senior who relies on Medicare, every low-income family whose children get healthcare through Medicaid, every person who depends on
I want to take us back for a moment to talk about why we even have a Department of Health and Human Services in the first place. Because when a government works the way it is supposed to, when public health and security is taken seriously, HHS exists to ensure that no American has to choose between their health and bankruptcy. It exists because we decided as a nation that we would not let people lose everything just because they get sick, that we would not let children die from preventable diseases, that we would set basic rules on food and drug safety to protect families, that we would invest in science not as an indulgence but as a way to improve the life and the quality of life for all Americans.
And, tonight, we are being asked to hand over that responsibility to a man who has spent his career undermining scientific achievement, to a man who has told Americans a thousand different times in a thousand different ways not to trust the very science that has saved millions of lives.
So who exactly is RFK, Jr., and what does he believe? Let's talk about what this nominee has actually said. In 2005, he wrote an article, one so riddled with falsehoods that even the publisher, Rolling Stone, retracted it--this article accusing the government of covering up a supposed link between vaccines and autism, an article that said vaccines ``poison[ed] an entire generation of American children.'' That claim has been debunked more times than any of us can count.
The New England Journal of Medicine, the CDC, the WHO, the American Academy of Pediatrics--every credible institution that studies this issue has confirmed what the science has long established: Vaccines do not cause autism.
But Mr. Kennedy did not retract the claim. He did not acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus. No. No. He doubled down. He founded the Children's Health Defense, an organization that masquerades as a public health group while spreading disinformation that has fueled vaccine hesitancy across this country and beyond.
His group has falsely linked vaccines to neurological disorders, to chronic illnesses, to developmental delays. They have suggested, without a shred of evidence, that childhood immunization schedules are unsafe. They have flooded social media with scare tactics, with conspiracy theories, with outright lies that have led parents to refuse vaccines for their children.
They even sold children's onesies with catch phrases like ``No Vax, No Problem'' and ``Unvaxxed, Unafraid.''
And because words have power, because a lie repeated enough can masquerade as truth, the damage has been staggering.
The 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa: Why did that happen? Because vaccination rates plummeted down to just 31 percent after anti-vaccine activists spread fear and misinformation. Robert F. Kennedy was part of that.
His organization amplified the very lies that led Samoan parents to hesitate, to delay, to forgo the measles vaccine--reckless, irresponsible, and deadly.
Mr. President, 83 lives were lost when measles tore throughout the region. Most of those killed were children. There were parents who trusted, as all parents do, that the world would be safe for their sons and daughters, and what did they find? They found that trust abused by people peddling misinformation, by reckless speculation dressed up as concern, by the very ideas Mr. Kennedy has trafficked in for years.
Let's not pretend that this is some harmless contrarian at play here, that this is some cocktail party eccentric, or that this is some kind of lively academic debate. When a man tells millions of people not to vaccinate their children and they listen, children die.
It did not stop there. In 2021, in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic, as COVID-19 tore through communities and filled emergency rooms to capacity, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., used his platform not to encourage vaccination, not to protect the public, but to do quite the opposite. He promoted the lie that mRNA vaccines alter human DNA. False--they do not. He suggested, without evidence, that the COVID vaccine was more dangerous than the virus itself--false. He compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany, invoking Anne Frank--a grotesque and offensive distortion of history.
As recent as 2023, RFK was on podcasts arguing that ``there's no vaccine that is safe and effective.''
This is the man we are considering for Secretary of Health and Human Services--a man who, when presented with lifesaving science, does not champion it, he undermines it; a man who, when given the choice between protecting public health and indulging conspiracy theories, chooses conspiracy every single time.
It is worth asking ourselves why Donald Trump would support a nominee so unqualified for this position, whose views are so contrary to science. Yes, I get it, RFK dropped out of the Presidential race and endorsed Donald Trump, but is there more to it than that? I think the answer is yes.
To understand why Donald Trump would support a nominee so unqualified, it is worth asking ourselves why scientists like Anthony Fauci, who have devoted their long careers to deploying science in the service of better health, have been made a villain by Donald Trump. Because the answer lies in the mirror image of the two. Why promote RFK, Jr., the vaccine charlatan, and at the same time vilify Anthony Fauci, the vaccine champion?
I will say this: Of all the attacks on our institutions during the first 4 years of Donald Trump, nothing was more corrosive to our democracy than his relentless assault on the truth because nothing is more useful to a demagogue than to destroy the very idea of truth. If nothing is to be believed, then nothing is to be believed. If there is not some shared experience to draw upon, then what is left to decide who should govern but political tribe or violence and one-man rule?
This is why the demagogue always attacks a free press and calls it fake. He must cause the public not to believe its lying eyes. A vicious mob attacks the Capitol; the would-be despot calls them tourists. The mob attacks police and beats them; the would-be despot calls them political prisoners. He fires inspectors general whose job it is to root out corruption and says it is to fight corruption. He wants to dismantle the Agency that protects consumers; he says that it is to protect consumers. He wants to plunder the Treasury to make his rich friends richer and shower them with tax cuts, and he says he is saving the Treasury by emptying it.
But why the attack on science? What has science to do with a despot's need to attack the truth? Well, what is the scientific inquiry but a search for fact and truth? And what is the scientist but the symbol of a search for fact and truth? Want to attack the truth? You must attack the truth tellers. You must attack science itself. Out with the Faucis and in with the charlatans.
But the truth cannot be made to disappear so easily. I remember who saved our country during its most deadly pandemic in 100 years, and it wasn't the charlatans. It was the scientists and the healthcare workers and the essential workers.
We saw true heroes during that pandemic. I remember the images clear as day--first responders without the necessary PPE rushing into homes where infected individuals were afraid and alone; nurses and EMTs working back-to-back shifts and watching their friends, neighbors, and communities torn apart inside and out by this horrible disease.
We got out of that pandemic in significant part because of the vaccine and the brave healthcare providers who administered it and other lifesaving care, not despite it.
While Mr. Kennedy postures as a skeptic, while he frames himself as a crusader against corruption, his organization did nothing to help us through that deadly pandemic, and, in fact, he has profited handsomely from the fear that organization sows.
In 2020 alone, Children's Health Defense saw its revenue double, raking in millions as the pandemic worsened. Mr. Kennedy built himself a lucrative career not by exposing anti-science falsehoods but by spreading them, by cultivating them, and profiting from them. This is opportunism of the most grotesque kind. This is grift masquerading as principle. And now, we are being
I have to ask because it demands to be asked: What exactly is the vision here? What kind of Health and Human Services Secretary does the Trump administration believe they are appointing?
I think they know, and I think they know they have their man in RFK, Jr., because if your goal is to dismantle public health, if your goal is to dismantle the truth, if you want a Secretary who will tell people to ignore doctors and trust whatever random YouTube video they last saw, then, yes, this is your guy. If you want a Secretary who won't say no even if the falsehoods cost lives, like advocating bleach or horse dewormer to cure COVID, this is your guy.
If you want a Secretary who has no will, desire, or guts to stand up to Elon Musk or Donald Trump, who craves nothing more than the attention that a high office will bring, then this--this is most definitely your guy.
If your goal is to make sure that Medicaid--the single largest source of health insurance in this country--becomes nothing more than a cautionary tale at the behest of RFK, Jr., and Dr. Oz; if you want millions of people to lose coverage; if you want seniors to see their Medicare protections gutted, then by all means, let's give Mr. Kennedy the job.
While they are gutting healthcare, while they are stripping away protections, while they are making measles great again, they want to hand out tax cuts to billionaires like party favors. Trillions of dollars taken out of our healthcare system and handed over to the wealthiest among us. Trillions of dollars to people who already have more than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. But that child in Medicare or Medicaid who needs insulin, that senior on Medicare who has a heart condition--no, we are told there is just not enough in the budget for them.
Well, I reject the cynical notion that government exists only to serve the powerful. I reject the idea that expertise is optional, that science is negotiable, and that the well-being of the American people is just another chip to be bargained away. I reject it, and I know I am not the only one.
I do not believe in a government that exists only to protect the powerful, I do not believe that we are at our best when we are most indifferent, and I do not believe that the American experiment was meant to end with a nation that surrenders its own future to cynics and con men.
So let me tell you what I do believe. I believe in the doctor pulling a double shift in the community hospital, exhausted but unwavering, because she took an oath to heal. I believe in the mother who walks her child into a free clinic and breathes easier knowing that today, at least, her son's asthma will be treated and he will breathe easier. I believe in the scientist who spends a lifetime working in obscurity so that one day no child has to suffer such a terrible and specific disease again. I believe in a government that does not mock these people, that does not sabotage them, that does not sell them out for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. And I believe we need the best and brightest to shepherd our healthcare system, our resources, to maximize every dollar in search of every cure.
RFK is not the best or the brightest. He will not bring back Camelot or make America healthy again, but his ignorance of science just might make people sick again, might deprive them of a treatment they need again, might cause hospitals to close again, might discourage young people from entering the sciences again. He just might.
We must not confirm a man who so willingly endeavors to be the enemy of the truth when it comes to our health. We need to vote like our lives depend on it because, for a great many Americans, it will.
Mr. President, it is truly astounding that the Senate stands on the brink of confirming Mr. Kennedy to lead America's public health Agencies.
If the Senate weren't gripped in this soon to be infamous period of total capitulation, I don't think this nominee would have made it as far as a hearing. If I told you a couple of years ago: There is a guy who has been nominated to run public health nationwide. His job will be to protect American families from death and disease. He is going to run the whole public health system--Medicare, Medicaid, the CDC, the NIH, all of it. He will decide how we protect the country from infectious disease. He will set the rules for every hospital in the country. He will decide what healthcare and medicines get covered by Medicare. He will manage our response in the event of a pandemic.
And then I told you: Well, there are a few concerns about this nominee. First of all, zero relevant experience. He is a trial lawyer, a politician from a famous family, no medical or scientific background. He has never run a hospital or a health system or anything like that.
Second of all, he has said some pretty wild stuff about public health over and over and over again, like, he proposed that COVID-19 might be ``ethnically targeted'' to spare Jews--``ethnically targeted'' to spare Jews. He said Lyme disease was a military bioweapon.
For years, he has been persuading American families against routine childhood immunizations. He has compared the work of the CDC to ``Nazi death camps.''
If a couple of years ago I told you all of that and I told you the Senate was about to put America's health in this man's hands, you would probably tell me the Senate has lost its mind.
By the way, it is OK to challenge scientific consensus, and it is not just OK, it is necessary to question the way we manage our healthcare system and our food system. They are not working. But that is not the issue here. The issue for the Senate is, are we going to put in charge of American public health a man with no relevant credentials, who for decades seems to have latched on to just about every piece of half- baked conspiracist pseudoscience he has come across?
I mentioned earlier that Mr. Kennedy compared the CDC's work to ``Nazi death camps.'' These aren't comments I take lightly given my ancestors were exterminated in Nazi death camps and the folks who work at the CDC are my constituents.
And Mr. Kennedy, if confirmed, will take charge of HHS and, therefore, the CDC, at a moment when an onslaught of political attacks by the new administration have thrown the CDC into chaos. Huge amounts of CDC data and reporting were simply disappeared from the internet-- cancer data, maternal mortality data.
There has been an unprecedented interruption of the ``Mortality and Morbidity Report.'' That is data that has been consistently reported since the 1930s.
Public reporting about bird flu has been interrupted, while it rips through chicken flocks and has been documented jumping to humans.
The administration tried to freeze funding for the CDC's flagship infectious disease monitoring program, the one that detects outbreaks before they are out of control, and that effort was stopped only by a court order.
And we are hearing threats to gut the CDCs workforce, at a time when the country needs the CDC firing on all cylinders to prevent deadly outbreaks of infectious disease.
If this administration guts and gags the CDC, who is going to defend the Nation from Ebola. Who is going to protect kids from measles? Who is going to save us from TB?
And then there is this crusade against health equity--``equity,'' an unspeakable word now under our new official MAGA state ideology. Health equity--that means trying to address the huge race and class disparities in health outcomes that plague our country. For example, it means making sure clinical trials include minority groups so we get good data on how to save all lives, not just some lives. It means figuring out how to get women in remote, rural communities prenatal checkups. It means addressing the fact that maternal mortality for Black women in Georgia is three times higher than for White women.
Trying to make healthcare in America equitable--``equitable,'' meaning dealing fairly with all concerned, no matter how much money you have or
Mr. President, here are excerpts from a letter I received today from a constituent.
My constituent continues:
The letter goes on.
That is a letter I received today from a constituent who has served at the CDC for decades and who has now been doxed and publicly targeted and fears for her safety, apparently because working to reduce health disparities for communities and people who have lousy access to healthcare and poor health outcomes makes you a political target.
And this constituent isn't alone. There are dozens more CDC workers in Georgia who have faithfully served our country for years and who face the very same harassment and the same threats.
This is ugly and menacing stuff, and the license for it comes directly from the President of the United States.
Tomorrow morning, unless Senate Republicans can summon a shred of courage, the Senate may be poised to confirm someone to lead America's public health system who is obviously unqualified and unfit.
As we speak, the world's flagship disease control Agency is in chaos and under political attack, and public servants who dare to try to improve health outcomes for the poor and disadvantaged fear for their safety--all brought to you by the President who said: Maybe bleach injections could cure COVID.
None of this bodes well for the health and safety of the American people. I will oppose the Kennedy nomination. It is not too late for my colleagues gripped by political fear to do the same.
