    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 39 (Thursday, February 27, 2025)]
    [Senate]
    [Pages S1439-S1441]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                    DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

      Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to speak about the extreme cuts that
    have affected the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal
    Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers
    for Disease Control.
      First of all, the DOGE operation starts out with a premise that it is
    attacking waste, fraud, and abuse. And I am for that. Anyplace that we
    can save taxpayers money by responsible assessment of what programs are
    working or aren't, anytime we can uncover waste or certainly fraud and
    abuse, I want to do that, and I want that to be done across the board.
    Whether you are talking about health programs where they could be
    better organized or they could be more efficiently run to achieve the
    goal of better services for the people you represent and I represent
    for all Americans, I want to do that.

    [[Page S1440]]

      But how is DOGE going about it?
      And we are here to talk about how they are doing it in the Department
    of Health and Human Services, under Mr. Kennedy. Basically, they are
    doing it by sending out firing notices to people. Over 5,000 people
    have been fired, and that includes 700 in the Food and Drug
    Administration, 1,200 in the National Institutes of Health, and 600 in
    the Centers for Disease Control.
      Here is the question, and the answer is obvious: If you want to make
    a program more efficient, do you fire the people first and essentially
    erode any capacity of that program to deliver the services that the
    American people need? Or do you study the organization? Do you kick the
    tires? Do you investigate and analyze where the issues are that can be
    addressed by a comprehensive plan that would include getting rid of any
    waste? It would include getting rid, obviously, of any fraud and abuse.

      But what DOGE is doing is not that. It doesn't have a plan. What it
    has is a decision to fire people. So, essentially, DOGE is saying that
    the higher the body count of people who are fired, then the more the
    savings will be. Well, there is truth in that. If you just fire people
    and they are not on the payroll, you are going to save taxpayer money.
    But does that mean that you are getting waste, fraud, and abuse out of
    the system, or are you just wrecking the program? It clearly is going
    to be the latter.
      You are just wrecking the program because you didn't even take the
    time to examine what is going on and how best to do it. Think about it.
    In the National Institutes of Health, there are investigators, there
    are scientists. These are people who are working on research that is
    important to your State and mine about diseases, about cures, about
    vaccines, about pandemics, things that--you know, American people are
    entitled to have some confidence and security that we have the best
    minds addressing health issues and focusing on cures to diseases that
    all of us can be subject to or the people we love, that they will be
    doing that job.
      But these people are now just fired. They are gone. That means--just
    think about it. An NIH scientist, that is somebody who probably has a
    Ph.D, went to one of our State institutions. It might have been a land-
    grant college in North Carolina or a land-grant college in Vermont. And
    there is probably an enormous amount of talent in that person who was
    able to achieve a Ph.D in scientific research. And there is probably a
    good deal of public investment in the career of that person with the
    return being that person is going to be doing research on trying to
    cure diseases. And that person may well have gotten some Federal
    grants, including college assistance or Ph.D investigatory assistance.
      That could be hundreds of thousands of dollars the taxpayers really
    invested in supporting a person who has become a scientist, helping us
    on very important research that is really good for the American people.
      Boom. They go to work, or they are at home. They get an email, and
    they say: Don't show up for work; you are fired.
      There is a certain cruelty in a lot of these notices because it also
    has an assertion that your performance has been subpar. Of course, we
    find out there has been no performance review; and, in many cases,
    these people who were fired supposedly because of subpar performance,
    in fact, did just have a performance review that said you are doing a
    fantastic job.
      Or think about Food and Drug Administration. Their job is to review,
    among other things, medications that can provide life-enhancing,
    lifesaving, life-extending, pain-relieving medications that Americans
    are going to need and can benefit by. The sooner that work of
    investigation gets done, the sooner that the approval decisions can be
    made, the sooner cures get to market and to the folks in this country.
      Boom. They are fired.
      Again, these people, some of whom do have Ph.Ds, as I mentioned, but
    others of whom have been at the FDA for 15 or 20 years and have that
    institutional knowledge of how it works--these people are getting fired
    independent of any performance review, independent of any assessment of
    where do we need more people or where do we need fewer people or what
    are some of the functions that no longer need to be done versus some
    functions where we actually may need to enhance the staff to get a
    better job for the American people.
      What is so bogus about DOGE is that it is not about waste, fraud, and
    abuse. It really is not because there would have to be an
    investigation, a plan, people looking at how the functions are being
    performed. It is simply a mechanism to justify firing people and
    lowering the head count.
      And as I mentioned, you know what? That will ``save money,'' but it
    will destroy the capacity of these organizations that all of us agree
    are doing incredibly important work. It is going to destroy their
    ability to do it. It is just mangling the services in the area of
    Health and Human Services that are so essential to the well-being of
    the people in this country.
      By the way, this has a real economic impact; and it is the economic
    impact, first and foremost, among those individuals who lost their
    jobs. But it is a real economic impact because we are eroding the
    infrastructure of science, of inquiry, and of investigation for better
    health cures. You don't destroy that and put it back together again
    overnight. That is what is so wrong-headed about the DOGE approach to
    things--body count versus better service, better performance, more
    sustainability.
      Mr. President, you couldn't have a worse approach if your goal is
    more efficiency, better service, and better outcomes.
      The other question that is going to be recurring for the American
    people is the likelihood--the inevitability, actually--of massive
    reductions in aid for Medicaid. Under the version of the House budget
    reconciliation act, they have to come up with trillions of dollars in
    savings. The only place you are going to get that is by cutting
    Medicaid.
      We have a contradiction here because the President says he loves
    Medicaid, but he also says he loves the House bill. And the House bill
    does not love Medicaid. What the House bill does is it attacks
    Medicaid.
      In Vermont, we have 20 percent or so, a little more, of our folks who
    depend on Medicaid for healthcare. It is kids from low-income families;
    it is seniors. Two out of three of our nursing home beds are paid for
    by Medicaid. You are going to have families where the kids are really
    trying to help their parents. Their parents need a nursing home, and
    they are going to get kicked out, literally. That is what happens.
      Finally, what we know is, why is this happening? Why are these
    firings on a mass level being made when there has been no study and no
    plan in place to indicate that action will improve services or, in the
    long run, save money for the American people? It is being done because
    there is a goal to have a tax cut. That is a fair-and-square debate.
    What should our tax rate be; should we have a tax cut; if we have a tax
    cut, how do you allocate; how much goes to corporations; how much goes
    to billionaires; how much goes to everyday people?
      But to have that debate without acknowledging that the way you are
    going to pay for it is by taking away healthcare for everyday
    Americans, that is not on the level. That is what is happening here, is
    that there is an agenda: Get that tax cut.
      I happen to profoundly disagree with the tax cut for major
    multinational corporations, and I profoundly disagree with lowering
    taxes for billionaires--totally disagree with that. But when it is the
    situation that we are going to pay for it by taking away nursing home
    beds from Vermonters, from folks in the Carolinas, that is really
    appalling. We should not do it.

      I am here with my colleagues to defend our commitment to good
    scientific research, to good cancer research, to good healthcare access
    for poor kids and seniors, and to sound the alert that that is what is
    at stake despite what the President may say about his ``love'' for
    Medicare. What he clearly has as his major agenda item is that tax cut.
      I will acknowledge we can have a debate fair and square about that
    tax cut. But I think it is incumbent on all of us to acknowledge that
    the path to the President getting his tax cut marches right through
    access to healthcare in an attack on Medicaid.

    [[Page S1441]]

      I yield the floor.
      The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.

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