Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) led a press briefing on Thursday to lambast recent changes at HHS by Sec. RFK Jr.
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NewsTranscript
00:00into the Department of Disease. Seriously, do you know what Trump and RFK Jr. are
00:05doing about the measles outbreak? They are ripping away funding Congress
00:10already provided to respond to the outbreaks. They're stopping public health
00:15work in its tracks, even as this outbreak is threatening to spiral out of control.
00:20What are they doing about the opioid crisis, or maternal death rates, or bird
00:25flu for that matter? More cuts. And don't forget mass firings. What are they doing
00:31about vaccine hesitancy? Unsurprisingly, these anti-vaxxers are slashing vaccine
00:38research, and at the very same time dedicating resources to launch
00:43vaccine conspiracy investigations and resurrect debunked science. And now RFK
00:50Jr. announces he is pushing out some 20,000 workers at HHS. That is about as
00:57good for the public health as a cough in your face. Looking for new ways to make
01:02government more efficient and responsive is important. But Trump and RFK Jr. are
01:07doing anything but that. It does not take a genius to understand that pushing out
01:1320,000 workers at a preeminent health agency, choking off funding for cancer
01:19research, and eliminating funding that prevents infectious diseases like
01:25measles, will not make Americans healthier. It will just mean fewer health
01:31services for our communities, more opportunities for disease to spread, and
01:36longer waits for life-saving treatments and cures. These cuts will not reduce the
01:43deficit in any way, not at all. Instead, they threaten to incur massive costs
01:49down the road when we are caught flat-footed by the next health care
01:54crisis. Consider how much bipartisan spending Congress had to push out the
01:59door. Why? Because Trump failed to get the COVID pandemic under control when it
02:05first hit. It costs something to prevent pandemics, and it costs a whole lot more
02:11when we fail to stop them. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but
02:17Trump and RFK Jr. are picking neither. They are picking chaos, plague, and
02:23pandemonium. That may as well be their official policy, because that is what is
02:27coming down the tracks if they don't change course. And I will tell you right
02:31now, when our health agencies are unprepared for a deadly pandemic, when
02:37our hospitals are overwhelmed with sick kids because our local public health
02:42officials can't track a worsening measles outbreak, when people start
02:47getting E. coli and we cannot figure out where it came from, or whooping cough
02:52starts spreading and we can't do basic tracing to stop it, or flu season sweeps
02:58through nursing homes like never before because no one bothered to help people
03:03get vaccinated, or a vaccine doesn't even exist because HHS stopped funding
03:08seasonal flu vaccine development, or our mental health centers closed because
03:14federal grants were axed and opioid deaths rise again because prevention
03:19and treatment work was cut off. The American people will not forget it was
03:25Trump and RFK Jr. who gutted essential services and put their lives at risk.
03:30Today may be a great day for snake oil. It may be a great day for conspiracies.
03:36It may be a great day for measles, but it is an incredibly alarming day for
03:42America. It is an incredibly scary time for moms and dads who just want to keep
03:48their kids healthy and just want to know there are competent people on the job
03:53keeping us safe from diseases. I have warned my colleagues from the start, this
03:57is not some political game. The work that HH does, or in this case stops doing, has
04:03life-and-death consequences. Well my colleagues better get used to hearing
04:08that warning because for as long as Trump and RFK Jr. continue down this
04:13absolutely reckless path, I will echo that warning over and over and over
04:19again because it is an important one. Given the stakes here, given the serious
04:24threats to our families, I don't say any of us can do anything less. We need to
04:29speak up about how dangerous this is. We are speaking up. We need to push back and
04:35fight for our families and we need our families to stand up and fight with us.
04:39I know I will be and I'm proud to be here with two of my great colleagues who
04:43feel the same.
04:49So yesterday I was proud to lead a forum that shined a light on how Donald Trump
04:57is actively putting cures for cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and so many other
05:03illnesses further out of reach for American families. At that event
05:08yesterday we heard from Dewey, a ten-year-old who shared with us what
05:13it's like watching his dad battle ALS. He needed our help so his dad, his hero,
05:21could live to watch him graduate from high school. Dewey begged us to protect
05:27the life-saving research being done at the NIH so his dad could see him walk
05:34across that stage and get his diploma. I say this because when we talk about
05:40staffing cuts at our nation's Health Department, we aren't just talking about
05:45some imaginary person sitting around pushing papers. We are talking about
05:52people who support life-saving research to find cures to ALS or Alzheimer's
05:59disease or cancer and we're talking about giving hope to kids like Dewey. But
06:05today's announcement goes well beyond finding cures for serious illnesses. This
06:11announcement puts all of our health in jeopardy. We're talking about more kids
06:17getting sick from infectious diseases. We're talking about less support for
06:23seniors who rely on Medicaid and Medicare. We're even potentially talking
06:29about families getting sick from things that they buy at the grocery store. The
06:34Trump administration is endangering your family to make more room in their budget
06:40for tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. They are rigging the system
06:46for themselves and they want Americans to pay for it with their health and
06:51their lives. Look, I'm on board to make the Health Department more efficient but
06:58here's where I differ. I want to make it more efficient for American families. I
07:04want to make it more efficient so that Americans can get better health care for
07:11a lower price. Donald Trump, RFK Jr. and Elon Musk want to gut the Health
07:19Department in service to themselves. Here's the simple truth. If Donald Trump
07:25and RFK Jr. were really interested in making Wisconsin families healthier, they
07:31join us in fighting to bring down the cost of prescription drugs and lower
07:37health care costs. And they are not doing that. Today's announcement, once
07:43again, shows that when they say make America healthy again, what they really
07:49mean is to make room in their budget for billionaire and corporate tax breaks.
07:59And thank you to my two great colleagues for their incredible leadership on this
08:05issue. I'm Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts. I'm the Chairman of the
08:10Health, of the Ranking Member on the Health Committee in the Health
08:16Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. And I want to thank Senators Patty Murray
08:22and Tammy Baldwin for their leadership on this issue. We are already in a
08:28health care crisis in the United States of America. Corporate greed is hollowing
08:33out nursing homes and hospitals. Hospitals, pharmacies, community health
08:39centers are struggling to keep their doors open. Health providers are burning
08:44out. Americans are waiting too long and paying too much for health care. Those
08:51are the problems we need to be tackling. Americans are asking for real solutions
08:56and demanding that we deliver. Instead, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is using the
09:03Department of Health and Human Services to do the bidding of Elon Musk and
09:08Donald Trump, rather than working on tackling the crisis that we're having in
09:13health care right now in our country. It is a Make America Sick Again agenda,
09:20which Robert F. Kennedy, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump are seeking to implement in
09:25our country. Let's look at what the agenda has been so far.
09:30Cut biomedical research grants, slowing down research into diabetes, Alzheimer's,
09:36cancer, suddenly disrupting funding for community health centers, spreading
09:44misinformation about the measles vaccine, and pushing fringe conspiracy theories,
09:50conspiring with Republicans to gut Medicaid, Social Security, food security
09:56benefits, and now fire one quarter of the employees at the Department of
10:04Health and Human Services that have dedicated their lives to our public
10:11health. Today's announcement is not just a restructuring of the Department of
10:16Health and Human Services. It is a catastrophe for the health care of every
10:21American. Secretary Kennedy's actions to gut the Department of Health and Human
10:27Services will only leave Americans to get sicker while the rich get richer.
10:32When we cut off resources, we are leaving seniors, people struggling with mental
10:38illness and addiction, and people with disabilities as the first to lose the
10:44services. Disruptions in care will leave families stuck in chaos when they're
10:49just trying to get well. This administration will say this is about
10:54efficiency and cost-saving. The only efficiency is efficiently cutting off
11:00health care for Americans who need it the most. The only cost-saving is to
11:07enable tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Kennedy, Musk, and Trump only
11:17serve themselves and the wealthiest people in our country in order to drain
11:23the money from the health care systems in our nation for tax breaks for the
11:29wealthiest people in our society. No cuts to Medicaid, no cuts to life-saving
11:35research, no cuts to community health centers, hospitals, and pharmacies, no
11:39more cuts to health care, no more cuts. That is where we must be as a society.
11:45Donald Trump has hired Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the hitman on Medicaid, on NIH,
11:54on all of the funding that provides the security and the health for all
12:01Americans, and it's all for the tax breaks for the millionaires and the
12:06billionaires. A vision without funding is an hallucination, and that's what they're
12:12trying to create and sell in our nation, that they're going to drain hundreds of
12:17billions of dollars out of all these health care programs and then pretend
12:21that America is healthier. Well, he and they are in for a fight, and Senator
12:26Murray is being a great leader in helping us to begin this conflict today,
12:32so thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Senator. I'm happy to take some questions.
12:36Yes? Is there any legislative remedy to this situation and layoffs, and we've seen some in the courts, but is there anything legislative?
12:46Well, I've been very clear that this administration has been illegally
12:51impounding dollars. That is illegal, and we are going to stay on them, and they've
12:55got to follow the law. We don't know exactly how these cuts are going to go. I
13:00think the President didn't even consult Congress. He had a report, he did a
13:05press conference with some Wall Street Journal or something. He didn't
13:09inform us, so we don't know the actual cuts or all of that, but what we do know
13:13is when you announce this many people will not be there to serve the critical
13:19interests of this agency, we know where the impact is. It's going to be in our
13:23families who are getting up and going to work and don't expect that their child
13:27might be exposed at wherever they went to school to some disease because it
13:31isn't being tracked anymore, or when you get up and you watch a news thing that
13:35says that some lettuce is not safe, take it back. That won't be happening because
13:41you don't have people tracking it, or making sure that people get access to
13:46Medicare or Medicaid or all the other services that are provided. That person,
13:50that human being is gone. It will impact every family in this country.
13:53When we were talking about USAID back when those cuts were announced, one of the issues you brought up was that it was illegal in that Elon Musk and Doge were not elected, they did not have the authority.
14:05In this case, it does seem to be agency down, starting with the Secretary, that these decisions were made. Do you think that that distinction changes the situation and makes a difference?
14:15Well, I will leave that to attorneys, which I am not, but I do know the law, and
14:20the law is that Congress passes the funds and the administration enacts it,
14:24and they cannot illegally impound funds that Congress has appropriated.
14:31You talked about the stakes of this and many of the other things that you're seeing from the Trump administration.
14:40We've seen a trend of a lot of Democrats using profanity in official communications.
14:46Senator Duckworth sent out a press release yesterday calling Pete Hegseth an effing liar.
15:01Do you think that reflects what you guys are seeing from the administration, the urgency, and do you think that that's an effective way to communicate that in some cases?
15:11I'm not going to comment on people's language. I'm not here to be a censor of people's language.
15:16I am here to tell people in this country that I'm angry, and I'm watching an administration come in and change the course in life and health and well-being of people in my communities, and I'm fighting back.
15:30We obviously just got the CR for the rest of this fiscal year, but at some point in the next few weeks or maybe a couple months, depending on timing,
15:37we will get the President's budget request for the upcoming fiscal year, and I'm curious how you think these Department and Agency actions,
15:44combined with whatever we may see in that budget request, are going to impact how you approach the next appropriations process, especially with labor age.
15:52So critically, when we do our appropriations bills, we have the agency head come before us on a bipartisan way and get to ask them questions and get their responses
16:04and their answers about their budget request, what they're asking for, and then we make our evaluation as members of Congress.
16:11It is our job to say, no, you aren't putting enough money in food safety.
16:17You're not putting enough money in NIH, and we add or subtract according to that.
16:22So I'll be demanding that those secretaries come before our appropriations committees and explain to us.
16:28They talk about transparency and accountability.
16:30Well, come before our committees.
16:32Be transparent.
16:33Tell us what you're doing, and we as Congress, whose responsibility it is to allocate funding, will make a decision about whether or not we agree with that.
16:43Yeah.
16:44Senator, I want to ask, you mentioned vaccine hesitancy is one of your concerns.
16:47You mentioned vaccine skepticism in your opening remarks.
16:50Do you have any reaction to the Washington Post report that while these jobs are being cut from HHS,
16:56the secretary has put David Geier, a vaccine skeptic, in charge of handling the link between autism and vaccination?
17:03I am deeply concerned that this administration has consistently put in place people at critical agencies who are promoting vaccine hesitancy
17:14and promoting ideas that have been shown time and time again through numerous scientific research are not true.
17:22And what does that do?
17:23It puts the health and safety of people in this country at risk.
17:28And as we heard when we had hearings for some of these, when we spend all this money that we have on retesting things and redoing things,
17:37we are not putting our money into research that can actually show us the answers for some of the questions that they're raising.
17:43So, yeah, I'm deeply concerned.
17:45And I'm going to ask a question on a separate topic, but it's a little related to the issue of funding.
17:49I saw this letter that you all sent to OMB regarding spending, and I'm curious what you think about it.
17:55Is this about the letter that Susan Collins and I sent today?
17:57I'm wondering what recourse you think you might have if you don't get a desirable response from the administration on what they're going to do with this funding and this spending.
18:04Well, this isn't a question.
18:07It's a matter of law.
18:08Under law, bipartisan, Democrats and Republicans, as Senator Collins and I stated this,
18:13the president doesn't have a choice to pick and choose which parts of emergency spending he can allocate for.
18:20We are telling him this is the law, allocate the funding.
18:26A big theme of President Trump's administration so far has been sending stuff back to the state levels.
18:31Can you clarify what of these cuts can be picked up by the state-level health agencies?
18:35I can tell you this.
18:37Right now today, and it's only 1 o'clock in my state, we are getting panicked calls from our health agencies about what funding is going to get cut off.
18:46We are in the middle of flu season.
18:48We are in the middle of a measles outbreak as well as whooping cough.
18:52And these are the officials that are letting people know here's where it's safe, here's where the outbreaks are, here's how you can protect yourself.
19:00Are these offices going to be closed?
19:02Are people going to get the information?
19:04How are they going to decide?
19:06We're hearing that offices are going to close.
19:08So already our local and state and county officials are saying to us, oh, my gosh, how are we going to do the jobs that people are counting us on?
19:16And I can tell you from my state and many other states, they don't have the budgets to all of a sudden go, oh, okay, excuse me, we'll just send a few more million dollars
19:24because Trump decided he's not going to do his federal obligation.
19:28They have to count on this funding.
19:30And to have it ripped away like this is just astounding to me.
19:35Do you have concerns that the impacts might be disproportionate, like regional versus urban communities or some states versus other states?
19:43I always have concerns.
19:45Often it's our rural communities who have the least amount of money to be able to do this kind of public health work that we are very seriously worried about losing.
19:55They are the folks that have the least amount of resources to be able to help out their constituents.
20:01They don't have the tax base.
20:03They don't have the manpower.
20:05They don't have all the infrastructure you need.
20:07So, yeah, I'm very concerned about what this means for our rural communities.
20:12Carol, are you worried about the impact of the Trump contract on the food safety concern?
20:17Absolutely.
20:18I mean, I'm always, Saturday morning, turn on the news and they say, oh, you know, don't buy lettuce from some grocery store because of this and check the dates.
20:26We all go to our refrigerator and check the dates.
20:29What if we have to get up on Saturday morning and go, nobody's checking that.
20:32I hope everything in my refrigerator is okay.
20:34I mean, that's what they're putting at risk.
20:38You get the last one.
20:42Just, this is unrelated, but obviously, big news about Ambassador nominating U.N.
20:50Do you have any comment on that?
20:52I don't have any insight into that or why that's being done or what she's going to do or whether it's about vote counts or something else.
21:01I guess we'll all learn in the next news cycle.
21:05Thank you, ma'am.