[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 29 (Wednesday, February 12, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S947-S949]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  NOMINATION OF ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. 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

[[Page S948]]

again, even when our Republican colleagues on the Senate Committee on 
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions tried to coach him along, he 
still simply did not get it, did not get the basics.
  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:

       I hope that the renewed drive . . . to provide vaccinations 
     for all Americans, and particularly those who are young, will 
     have the wholehearted support of every parent in America.

  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:

       To me this is like Nazi death camps, what happened to these 
     kids.

  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:

       We need to act fast . . . 600 people are going to walk into 
     offices at NIH and 600 people are going to leave.


[[Page S949]]


  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 (Mr. Budd). The Senator from Connecticut.

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