At Wednesday's House Appropriations Committee hearing, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) confronted HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over cuts to SAMHSA.
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00:00Mr. Secretary, Madeline Dean, suburban Philadelphia, thank you for being here.
00:05I want to read the very first sentence of your written testimony, which you have submitted.
00:10The mission of the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, is to enhance and protect the health and well-being of the American people.
00:18And we are here to analyze the 2026 budget request, as the chairman points out.
00:25But I also want to take a look at what the ranking member has taken a look at, which is the cuts going on right now to that which has already been appropriated.
00:35We have to really keep a clear line here between what's your proposal for 26 and what is going on right now against the legislation that we have passed and that has been signed into law.
00:48I have to tell you that I'm more interested in substance than slogans.
00:52I'm getting a little lost in the MAGA, the MAHA.
00:56Now there's AHA.
00:57I don't know where we're going with this.
00:59I want to talk about the substance.
01:01And in this case, something very personal to me is the issue of addiction and mental health.
01:08And I know that you care deeply about these issues.
01:11I know you have been honest about your own recovery, your own struggle with addiction.
01:16In my family, my middle son, Harry, is now 12 and a half years in recovery from opioid addiction.
01:23It was a long road.
01:25It was a hard road.
01:26In active addiction, you know how difficult it is.
01:30And it's difficult to bring a family member back.
01:32I give Harry great credit.
01:34He now works in the area of addiction.
01:37That's why I'm very, very worried about what is going on with SAMHSA.
01:42If you take a look at the data, the numbers, we were getting somewhere.
01:47Two years ago, three years ago, we were losing 110,000 people a year to overdose.
01:54That's 300 people a day.
01:56I call that a jetliner a day of souls crashing to this country.
02:00Just last year, the second half of 23 and the first half of 24, 12 months, that number went
02:08down 27% to 81,000 deaths of overdose.
02:13Don't let me minimize 81,000 deaths.
02:16That's still 220 people a day.
02:18Today, tomorrow, yesterday, 365 days a year.
02:23But a 27% reduction in overdose deaths in this country, overdose is still stealing a generation
02:31in this country.
02:32So why in God's name are we shuttering SAMHSA?
02:37We are not shuttering SAMHSA.
02:40I share your concerns, and I'm anxious to work with you on this problem.
02:45I'm fully committed to it because of my own history.
02:50I lost a brother or two to overdose.
02:52I lost one of my nieces during the pandemic to overdose.
02:56Like every family in this country has somebody that was lost.
03:00As you point out, we were losing, I think, two years, three years ago, 106,000 American
03:06kids.
03:07It's double the number that we lost during the 20-year Vietnam War, and we ought to be applying
03:13the same resources.
03:14Why the cuts to SAMHSA, and why are you shifting?
03:16We're not shuttering SAMHSA.
03:18We're still running 500 addiction centers.
03:21You've already cut SAMHSA, and the budget proposal is to shutter it and shift it to
03:27an AHA program, which I don't know what AHA means.
03:29To shift it to the Administration for Healthy America.
03:34We're shifting a lot of the chronic disease programs out of CDC into a center that will
03:41address chronic disease.
03:42If you and I agree that overdose is a public health epidemic in this country, then why
03:50would we, when we are finally seeing some success, bury that success, put it in an AHA program,
03:56which, by the way, logically doesn't make any sense.
03:59We have to now rehire people and figure out what their roles will be within AHA.
04:03Why wouldn't we analyze the data that shows we just saved 20-plus thousand lives in the
04:11course of one year?
04:14This matters in my district.
04:15I have buried way too many kids to overdose, to fentanyl poisoning, by the way.
04:20You don't have to be an addict.
04:21You can just be poisoned by fentanyl.
04:24Why in God's name are, this, this Administration wants to shutter it.
04:28We know that, and shift it into AHA.
04:31Why would you do that?
04:32They don't want to shutter.
04:33What we want to do is we want to shift that function into a place where we're going to
04:37be able to administrate it more efficiently, and that's all.
04:40What analysis was done?
04:42Can you show us the study that led you to the decision, shutter, SAMHSA, shift it.
04:48We call that shift and shaft in my old days as an appropriator in Pennsylvania.
04:53Shift it over here, throw it in a block grant program, and good luck.
04:57What's the analysis that you did that said, whatever SAMHSA was doing with harm reduction,
05:01by the way, with making naloxone available, with training for naloxone, I literally carry
05:08this with me every day.
05:09I want to normalize the life-saving capacity of naloxone, and you guys want to bury it in
05:15AHA.
05:16Oh, we want to provide naloxone, Narcon, we want to make sure that addicts have every
05:21option.
05:22You're eliminating the training for that.
05:23Suboxone, to methadone, and to 12-step programs, to inpatient, outpatient.
05:30You're zeroing them out.
05:32We want 500 addiction centers.
05:34We're not going to stop doing that.
05:36My agency will still do it.
05:38Are you looking at...
05:39It's shifting to a subdivision where we can operate it more efficiently with other chronic
05:44diseases.
05:45But do you realize...
05:46The CDC is going to do infectious disease, which is why we created it.
05:51It had mission creep, and it was operating with...
05:53Mission creep as it was saving lives?
05:55Mission creep...
05:56Mr. Secretary, I please, I beg of you, talk to these families.
06:01You know these families.
06:02You are these families.
06:04Help us save more lives.
06:06Service systems shift it and shaft it.
06:07Mr. Clyde.
06:08Mr. Clyde.
06:09Mr. Clyde.
06:14Mr. Clyde.