[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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