Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr sparred with Democratic senators about the mass exodus from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kennedy’s recent actions on vaccines.
Kennedy testified before the Senate Finance Committee Thursday, where he defended his recent actions at the department, which includes the National Institutes of Health and the CDC.
“If we don’t end this chronic disease, we are the sickest country in the world,” he said. “That’s why we have to fire people at CDC. They did not do their job. This was their job to keep us healthy.”
Last week, the Trump administration fired Susan Monarez, whom President Donald Trump had nominated to lead the agency. That triggered a resignation from other top officials at the center.
But many Democratic senators criticized him for his lack of understanding about public health and elevating conspiracy theorists.
“Republicans on the committee had a chance to prevent the public health train wreck that Mr. Kennedy has engineered,” Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said during the hearing.
Before the hearing began, Wyden and Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) released a 54-page report about Kennedy’s mismanagement of the department.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who repeatedly grilled Kennedy during his confirmation hearing, criticized Kennedy for dismissing every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June.
“This is the last thing our parents need, by the way, as kids are going back to school is to have the kind of confusion and expense and scarcity that you are creating as a result of your ideology,” he said. Kennedy in turn shot back and criticized Bennet.
“All the evidence is transparent for the first time in history and you were never there complaining when the pharmaceutical companies were picking those people and then running their products with no safety testing,” he said.
Kennedy, the son of the late Democratic attorney general and New York senator Robert F. Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy, has long promoted the idea that vaccines cause autism. He also loudly criticized the process for and mandates for the Covid-19 vaccine.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, criticized Kennedy for not supporting the Covid-19 vaccine with his organization the Children’s Health Defense. Cassidy, a physician for many years before he became a senator, also flagged an email from a fellow doctor saying doctors were confused about who could receive the Covid-19 vaccine.
“I would say, effectively, we’re denying people vaccine,” he said, to which Kennedy said “you’re wrong.”
Last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new round of Covid-19 vaccines for people 65 and older and for people who are younger who have underlying conditions that could make them more vulnerable to Covid-19. That has created confusion among pharmacies about who is eligible.
But Cassidy was not the only Republican who criticized Kennedy. Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, who is also a physician, said he worried about Kennedy’s recent changes in policy.
“The public has seen measles outbreaks, leadership at the National Institutes of Health questioning the use of mRNA vaccines, the recently-confimed director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fired, Americans don’t know who to rely on,” he said. “If we’re going to make America healthy again, we can’t allow public health to be undermined.”
