During Thursday’s Senate Democrats’ press briefing, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) discussed President Trump and HHS Sec. RFK Jr.'s funding cuts at the department.
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NewsTranscript
00:00into the Department of Disease. Seriously, do you know what Trump and RFK Jr. are doing about the
00:05measles outbreak? They are ripping away funding Congress already provided to respond to the
00:12outbreaks. They're stopping public health work in its tracks, even as this outbreak is threatening
00:18to spiral out of control. What are they doing about the opioid crisis or maternal death rates
00:24or bird flu for that matter? More cuts and don't forget mass firings. What are they doing about
00:31vaccine hesitancy? Unsurprisingly, these anti-vaxxers are slashing vaccine research
00:39and at the very same time dedicating resources to launch vaccine conspiracy investigations
00:46and resurrect debunked science. And now RFK Jr. announces he is pushing out some
00:5220,000 workers at HHS. That is about as good for the public health as a cough in your face.
01:00Looking for new ways to make government more efficient and responsive is important. But Trump
01:06and RFK Jr. are doing 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 research and
01:20eliminating funding that prevents infectious diseases like measles will not make Americans
01:28healthier. It will just mean fewer health services for our communities, more opportunities for
01:34disease to spread and longer waits for life-saving treatments and cures. These cuts will not reduce
01:42the deficit in any way, not at all. Instead, they threaten to incur massive costs down the road when
01:50we are caught flat-footed by the next health care crisis. Consider how much bipartisan spending
01:57Congress had to push out the door. Why? Because Trump failed to get the COVID pandemic under
02:03control when it first 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 Trump and RFK Jr.
02:19are picking neither. They are picking chaos, plague and pandemonium. That may as well be their
02:25official policy because that is what is coming down the tracks if they don't change course.
02:29And I will tell you right now, when our health agencies are unprepared for a deadly pandemic,
02:36when our hospitals are overwhelmed with sick kids because our local public health officials
02:42can't track a worsening measles outbreak, when people start getting E. coli and we cannot figure
02:49out where it came from, or whooping cough starts spreading and we can't do basic tracing to stop it,
02:56or flu season sweeps through nursing homes like never before because no one bothered to help
03:02people get vaccinated, or a vaccine doesn't even exist because HHS stopped funding seasonal flu
03:09vaccine development, or our mental health centers closed because federal grants were axed and opioid
03:16deaths rise again because prevention and treatment work was cut off. The American people will not
03:24forget it was Trump 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. It may be a great day
03:37for measles, but it is an incredibly alarming day for America. It is an incredibly scary time for
03:45moms and dads who just want to keep their kids healthy and just want to know there are competent
03:50people on the job keeping us safe from diseases. I have warned my colleagues from the start this is
03:57not some political game. The work that HH does, or in this case stops doing, has life and death
04:04consequences. Well my colleagues better get used to hearing that warning because for as long as
04:09Trump and RFK Jr. continue down this absolutely reckless path, I will echo that warning over and
04:17over and over again because it is an important one. Given the stakes here, given the serious
04:23threats to our families, I don't say any of us can do anything less. We need to speak up about how
04:30dangerous this is. We are speaking up. We need to push back and fight for our families
04:36and we need our families to stand up and fight with us.