[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 29 (Wednesday, February 12, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S953-S955]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NOMINATION OF ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.
Mr. SCHIFF. 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
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the government not as a luxury but as a necessity.
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
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asked to entrust the health of 330 million Americans to this man?
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.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
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