1 of 8 | U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a Senate Committee on Finance hearing on President Donald Trump’s health care agenda at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified for three hours Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee about firings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and his moves on vaccines.
Senators from both sides of the aisle attacked Kennedy for his decision on vaccine recommendations.
Republicans expressed their concerns on vaccines, and Democrats said he broke promises he made during his Senate confirmation hearing in January.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., went after Kennedy’s claim that major medical organizations have been corrupted by pharmaceutical companies.
“You’re telling the American people that the American Medical Association, representing hundreds of thousands of people, have been co-opted and that they should not trust their doctors? And the American Academy of Pediatrics? And by the way, just for the record, every single Republican — I don’t mean to be political here, Mr. Chairman — has received PAC money from the pharmaceutical industry. Are they all corrupt as well?” Sanders asked.
Kennedy responded: “I’m telling you, the American Heart Association has been corrupted by the pharma industry.”
Kennedy said earlier that the American Academy of Pediatrics is “gravely conflicted” because of donations from the pharmaceutical industry.
AAP CEO Mark Del Monte released a statement rebutting his claim.
“Secretary Kennedy’s claim that the American Academy of Pediatrics is ‘gravely conflicted’ is false and misleading. The AAP’s financial statements are publicly available for full transparency. Less than 4% of our revenue comes from industry sources.”
After the hearing, the White House released a statement supporting Kennedy.
“Today’s hearing showed exactly why President [Donald] Trump put Secretary Kennedy in charge of HHS: to fix this broken system that has overseen America’s unprecedented chronic disease crisis,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. “While Democrats play street theater and call for blindly throwing even more money at the problem, the Trump administration is focused on using evidence-based Gold Standard Science to truly Make America Healthy Again.”
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., slammed Kennedy over his comments following last week’s deadly school shooting.
During a Fox News interview following the shooting, Kennedy said he was interested in looking at “the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence.”
“You have no knowledge of that because you have no evidence of a connection,” Smith said.
Kennedy said, “You’re just making stuff up.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician, read out emails from people who said they’ve had difficulty getting vaccines. Cassidy submitted the emails to the record.
“I would say, effectively, we’re denying people vaccines,” Cassidy said.
Kennedy responded, “You’re wrong.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., sparred with Kennedy over how many Americans died from COVID-19.
“Do you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID?” Warner asked.
“I don’t know how many died,” Kennedy said.
“You’re the secretary of Health and Human Services,” Warner said. “You don’t have any idea how many Americans died from COVID?”
“I don’t think anybody knows, because there was so much chaos coming out of the CDC,” Kennedy said.
The CDC’s website shows that at least 1,231,440 deaths related to COVID-19 have been reported in the U.S. since 2020.
Susan Monarez, who was sworn in as CDC director less than one month before, was removed from her position by the White House after she refused to resign in August.
Four other CDC leaders resigned over frustration about anti-vaccine policy pushed by Kennedy.
He also fired the entire 17-member board of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing many of them with vaccine skeptics.
Kennedy cited the failures during the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason for the firings.
“These changes were absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world’s gold standard public health agency, with a central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said the CDC “failed that responsibility miserably during COVID.”
“The people at the CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” Kennedy said.
Monarez recently published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about her firing, saying that in a meeting before her firing, Kennedy told her to “preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric,” Monarez said.
Kennedy said what she wrote wasn’t true.
“So she’s lying today to the American people in The Wall Street Journal?” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked. Kennedy said, “Yes, sir.”
Senators on the panel grilled Kennedy about his views on mRNA vaccines and the loss of funds to Medicaid.
Wyden attacked Kennedy’s opening statement.
“Every single day, there has been an action that endangers the health and wellness of American families,” Wyden said. “Robert Kennedy has elevated conspiracy theorists, crackpots and grifters to make life-or-death decisions about the health care of the American people.”
Wyden said Kennedy “shouldn’t be within a million miles of this job.”
Wyden asked that the committee officially swear Kennedy in for testimony, but Committee Chair Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, objected.
“This committee’s unwillingness to swear this witness is basically a message that it is acceptable to lie to the Senate Finance Committee about hugely important questions like vaccines,” Wyden said.
