▶ 0:06:41who are pro-life. I'm encouraged by President Trump's tremendous success in getting our nation's border under control so quickly and so effectively. The president's success in securing our border directly benefits public health by reducing the incoming flow of illicit drugs like fentanyl, which has fallen by 54% since this time last year. And that's no small thing.
▶ 0:07:07Similarly, the president's border actions have significantly reduced the number of unaccompanied minors being trafficking into our country. I look forward to hearing from the secretary about these efforts as well. Also look forward to learning more about the secretary's plans to reform and reorganize the Department of Health and Human Services. Over the past two years, Secretary Ky has spoken eloquently to the American people about the urgent need for health reform.
▶ 0:07:37He continued to make the case for reform as he partnered with President Trump to make America healthy again movement. Last month, the secretary announced a number of structural reform proposals within the Department of Health and Human Services and its numerous sub agencies, including the establishment of a new administration for healthy America. Mr. Secretary, I appreciate the preliminary details of this plan that you have shared with us, and I look forward to hearing more this morning.
▶ 0:08:07Congress has also been engaged on the uh urgent need to reform our health care agencies. Last year, I was pleased to work with our colleagues on the energy and the commerce committee to initiate reform proposals for NIH or the National Institute of Health. I'm encouraged to see that the administration is building off these off of this u process by making additional reform proposals at department uh at the National Institute of Health.
▶ 0:08:37I look forward to hearing more details about that your proposal and to continuing a dialogue between the department and the appropriations committee as we begin the budget pro process in earnst mr secretary I'm sure you know all too well that implementing reforms in Washington is no easy task however the president has asked you to take on this weighty challenge and you have accepted that challenge we here in Congress want to partner with you bringing our
▶ 0:09:07own experience to the table as elected representatives of our communities. We share your goal to make America healthy again. And we look forward this morning to your testimony here today. And with that, I'd like to turn to uh our ranking member uh of the appropriations committee, Miss Delaro, for any opening remarks that she may have. Mr. recognized. Thank you very much, Mr.
▶ 0:09:31chairman and thank you for holding what is a very critically important hearing on President Trump's disastrous budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services. Secretary Kennedy, good morning to you. We welcome you uh to the House Appropriations Committee for your first budget hearing. Um however, I cannot thank you for the Trump administration's budget request to cut funding for important health programs by $33 billion. Quite frankly, I view it as a disgrace.
▶ 0:10:02Under your budget proposal, Americans would die of needless and preventable deaths. But before we talk about the request to cut tens of billions of dollars next year, I would like to talk about what is happening right now. The American people are demanding health with a cost of living. But President Trump is not laser focused on the cost of living crisis. He is actually making it worse.
▶ 0:10:24He promised to fight for the working class, but instead put Elon Musk and billionaires in charge of the government and you to destroy everything we know about good public health. Mr. Secretary, the administration is recklessly and unlawfully freezing and stealing congressionally appropriated funds from a wide swath of agencies, programs, and services across the government that serve the American people.
▶ 0:10:52And recall that this is a violation of the Constitution. The power of the purse resides with the Congress. It's article one, section 9, clause 7. Yourself and President Trump and Elon Musk are attacking health programs to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. And by promoting quackery, we are endangering the health of the American people with pseudocience, fear-mongering, and misinformation.
▶ 0:11:17Government should fight for the middle class, the working class, and the vulnerable, not the interests of billionaires like Elon Musk. Instead, with you at the helm, the Trump administration and Republicans in the Congress are destroying the crown jewels of our health system, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration. At the NIH, the world's largest funer of life-saving biomedical research.
▶ 0:11:46You and Elon Musk have fired or driven out nearly 5,000 personnel, including some of the world's most preeminent scientists, frozen billions of dollars in research to develop cures for cancer, Alzheimer's disease, women's health, and the list goes on. China and Europe are taking advantage of this disaster by recruiting American scientists away from the United States. China wants to overtake us as a global leader in health research and innovation. You and President Trump are aiding and abetting them.
▶ 0:12:17Two weeks ago, I called a hearing on cuts on the cuts to CDC because the Republican majority is refusing to hold this administration accountable for its wanting destruction. As part of your drastic and haphazard purge of CDC, you and Elon Musk eliminated entire divisions without consideration of what is being lost. More than 70% of CDC's funding is provided to state and local jurisdictions.
▶ 0:12:45These cuts affect families and communities in every one of our districts. These cuts are dangerous. Dr. Peter Marx, the country's top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, helped to develop the CO vaccines at record speed under the first administration. Dr. Markx was told to resign or be fired. In his resignation letter, Dr.
▶ 0:13:10Markx wrote that, and I quote, "It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies." End quote. Mr. Secretary, Dr. Markx was talking about your misinformation. He was talking about your lies about vaccines. Mr.
▶ 0:13:32Secretary, you are gutting the lifesaving work of the Department of Health and Human Services and its key agencies while the Republicans in this Congress say and do nothing. But the destruction of HHS is not limited to NIH, CDC, and the FDA. Mr. Secretary, you are eliminating entire agencies that have saved the lives of someone near and dear to each and every one of us. Because of these cuts, people will die.
▶ 0:14:01Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, SAMA, eliminated. Health Resources and Services Administration, HERSA, which as you know is responsible for ensuring access to health care for the uninsured, isolated, and vulnerable people, eliminated. The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, ASPER, which was created to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies, eliminated. The Administration for Community Living, ACL, eliminated, hurting seniors and people with disabilities.
▶ 0:14:31You can make the basis claim that you are simply reorganizing these functions of HHS all you want. It is simply a matter of fact that you cannot cut the department's budget and maintain all of its lifesaving programs and services. HHS has closed half of its regional offices, which serve 22 states and five territories.
▶ 0:14:5120,000 HHS employees are And Republicans have set the stage to cut Medicaid benefits from people who rely on that program to see a doctor, including roughly half of our nation's children. HHS has terminated more than 12 billion in funding for state and local health departments, including funding for mental health, substance abuse programs, treatment, sabotaging our progress in addressing the opioid crisis. Mr.
▶ 0:15:20Secretary, you are eliminating scores of CDC prevention programs, including HIV, tobacco, drowning, asthma, lead poisoning, and gun violence. Why on earth are these the places you are terminating for so-called waste? The life of a teenager that does not become addicted to cigarettes or injured by a firearm is not waste.
▶ 0:15:47Last month, you wrote in the New York Post, and I quote, "America has the highest rates of chronic disease in the world. We rank last in terms of health among developed nations, and life expectancy is declining for many groups of Americans." Mr.
▶ 0:16:04Secretary, much of what you wrote is true, but it is confounding and incomprehensible to then turn around and eliminate the CDC Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. And with respect to views on vaccine, quite frankly, I believe you are promoting quackery. Under your watch, our country is now failing to contain vaccinereventable diseases.
▶ 0:16:28Measles, a disease eliminated in the United States just decades ago, has now claimed the lives of three Americans, including two children, who died needlessly. And over 1,000 are confirmed to have contracted the disease. All while you pedal unfounded and dangerous vaccine skepticism, spread lies and misinformation about people living with autism. Vaccine programs for millions of Americans, including children. We do that so that they do not get these diseases like meals, measles. This is not a waste.
▶ 0:16:58The thousands of experts and experienced staff who help keep Americans safe from global infectious diseases like misos, polio, HIV, tuberculosis, and Ebola are not waste. These programs help to save the lives of men, women, and children from all walks of life in this country. And you have decimated the Food and Drug Administration by firing 3,500 employees, taking a wrecking ball to FDA's food safety mandate.
▶ 0:17:24You talk about making our food supply food supply healthier while gutting the support staff for critical inspections of things like baby formula. You talk about closing the generally recognized as safe or grass loophole which allows food companies to determine the safety of their own ingredients. Something that I have advocated for years but while firing staff in charge of food and chemical reassessment.
▶ 0:17:50The former deputy commissioner of the human foods program resigned in February, writing, and I quote, "I was looking forward to working to pursue the department's agenda of improving the health of Americans by reducing diet related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food. It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump administration's disdain disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda.
▶ 0:18:15However, it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role." End quote. That's a damning indictment of your work on food safety. I'm worried. I'm worried about a future public health crisis that emerges once the Trump administration has fully dismantled the nation's public health system.
▶ 0:18:34We are currently in the midst of an outbreak of aven influenza and this administration is woefully unprepared to protect Americans and mitigate its impacts if it transforms to be transmittable from person to person. This is all happening today right now. We are not talking about hypotheticals or whatifs or worst case scenarios. This destruction has happened and is happening today right now.
▶ 0:19:03Even though we received President Trump's concept of a budget plan on Friday, we are now into May without a real budget from the White House. Mr. Secretary, in the budget outline, you are asking Congress to cut funding for health programs by $33 billion, a cut of more than 25%. You are asking Congress to cut CDC by nearly $4 billion, NIH research by $18 billion, and you claim to be reorganizing the NIH.
▶ 0:19:32Any reorganizing of NIH must go through the Congress. We need to hold public hearings, engage in a thoughtful process to incorporate the best ideas to advance NIH as a crown jewel of biomedical research. Mr. Secretary, you have no lawful authority to undertake this by yourself. These are vital institutions built up over decades that protect Americans health and the health of people around the world.
▶ 0:19:59I do not believe the American people want less cancer research, fewer p people tracking infectious diseases. But that is exactly what this budget will deliver. We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis driven in part by skyrocketing health care costs. And you and Elon Musk and President Trump are making it worse. You are wreaking havoc at every level of our most critical health institutions. You are jeopardizing our family's health for the sake of billionaire tax cuts. But we are seeing push back at every level.
▶ 0:20:28The public is outraged at the enormous harms you have wrought. Dozens of courts have put restraining orders on the administration's actions, but the courts can only play defense. Republicans in this Congress could stop the mayhem, the chaos, and the destruction today if they had the courage, but they remain silent, petrified of the president's scorned, revenge, and retaliation.
▶ 0:20:53Those of us who serve in elected office, we are blessed and we have the power to do something. We know what's right and we know what's wrong and we understand the harm being wrought on the American people. We need to stand up, not be afraid. This is the time to meet the moment.
▶ 0:21:12As a top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, I will never stop fighting against this dangerous dismantling of Health and Human Services and its agencies, which is jeopardizing the health, the safety, and the well-being of millions of America's families. Thank you. I look forward to your testimony and to the important conversations we will have in this hearing this morning. I yield back, Mr. Chair. All right. Um, M Mr.
▶ 0:21:42Secretary, we uh look forward to your open remarks. You're now recognized. Of course, your written written statement will be included in the for the record, but uh you have the you have the floor and we look forward to your testimony. you, Ranking Member Deloro and members of the committee. I'm honored to appear before you today to present the Department of Health and Human Services fiscal year 2026 budget.
▶ 0:22:07Debilitating disease, contaminated food, toxic environments, addiction, mental health illness affect families across every race, class, and political belief. When my team and I took the helm at HHS, we set out with clear goals. First, we aim to make America healthy again with a special focus on chronic on the chronic disease epidemic.
▶ 0:22:32Second, we committed to delivering more efficient, responsive, and effective services to the over 100 million Americans who rely on Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs. Third, we focused on achieving these goals by cutting costs to taxpayers. We intend to do more, a lot more with less. The budget I'm presenting today supports these goals and reflects two enduring American values, compassion and responsibility.
▶ 0:23:01I invite the committee to unite around these ideals with me. The United States remains the sickest developed nation and we spend $4.5 trillion annually on health care. Two to three times more per capita than comparable nations. Clearly, something is structurally and systematically systemically wrong with our approach.
▶ 0:23:26Furthermore, health care costs are steadily increasing at a rate 2% greater than the economy. If we don't staunch this unsustainable hemorrhage, we will ransom children to bankruptcy, servitude, and disastrous health consequences. Yes, and exploding debt is a social determinant of health. We won't solve this problem by throwing more money at it. We must spend smarter.
▶ 0:23:54We will shift funding away from bureaucracy toward direct impact. Some things at HHS will not change. We will preserve legacy programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start as the foundation of the MAHA agenda. Vulnerable populations, seniors, and veterans deserve consistent access to care, and I will ensure that they it. Today, 83 million Americans, urban and rural, lack adequate access to primary care physicians.
▶ 0:24:25We will prioritize these families, especially Native Americans and Alaskan communities. We will protect IHS funding, streamline its operations, and give the tribes more autonomy for managing their resources. Let me be clear. We intend to make the Trump HHS not just the most effective, but also the most compassionate in US history. Our official budget statement outlines many priorities, but I will highlight a few.
▶ 0:24:54First, we will consolidate programs to better tackle mental health and addiction. These issues now rival chronic disease and their impact. HHS will aggressively combat the opioid crisis, especially the spread of synthetic drugs like fentanyl. We will empower state, local, and tribal leaders to create effective solutions. Second, we will address nutrition, physical activity, and healthy lifestyles.
▶ 0:25:22The president budget requests 94 billion in discretionary funds to support these priorities, including the administration for a healthy America. We will emphasize healthy eating and head start and ensure the program continues to serve its 750,000 children and parents Third, we will equip the FDA to expand its food safety efforts through research, regulations, independence, and education to remove harmful chemicals from both food and
▶ 0:25:52packaging. And we're already doing this more aggressively than any other administration in history. We will fund cutting edge research at the NIH while cutting risky or non-essential services. that includes ending of gain of function experiments and research based upon radical gender ideology.
▶ 0:26:14At the CDC, we'll return to its core missions, tracking disease, outbreaks, and sustaining public health's infrastructure while cutting waste. And I'll add in response to your critique about the measles, we are doing a better job at CDC today than any nation in the world at controlling this measles outbreak. And I'm happy to elaborate on that afterward.
▶ 0:26:41Fifth, we will eliminate DEI funding and redirect resources toward real poverty reduction. We will remove we will move beyond lip service to communities of color and take meaningful action to meet their needs. Six, we will strengthen cyber security and health IT. The AI revolution has arrived and we are already using these new technologies to manage healthcare data more efficiently and securely.
▶ 0:27:10Finally, we will rebuild public trust. trust that eroded through years of industry capture, corruption, waste, and misplaced priorities, including by some of the gentlemen that you just mentioned, ranking member. We will launch a new era of transparency and public service, creating an honest, HHS at answers to the president, to Congress, and to the American people.
▶ 0:27:37I look forward to working with Congress to pursue this mission together as a bipartisan cause. Let's work side by side to make America healthy again. Thank you, Ben. Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. We have another committee meeting. Dearly noted, I welcome your absence.
▶ 0:28:06Congressman, I'll be back. All right. Thank you, uh, Mr. Secretary. Um, I I will begin. Um, I I mentioned in my opening remarks, uh, that, uh, I appreciate your commitment to upholding the sanctity of human life.
▶ 0:28:23um in your capacity as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, uh the pro-life community was deeply concerned uh by numerous actions that was taken during the Biden administration that undermined the right to life and the conscience of rights of prolife Americans.
▶ 0:28:42For example, the center for disease control revealed at the end of the Biden administration that the CDC funded nurses in Mosmb beek were performing abortions that violated the Helms Act and which prohibits US foreign aid from abortions. Um in addition to that, the the Biden administration punished states by denying them uh Title 10 funding for refusing to provide abortion counseling in violation of state law.
▶ 0:29:11Can you talk to us for a couple of minutes or whatever about steps that you see the department are now taking to protect the right to life and the conscience rights of pro-life medical providers and also medical students. Uh yes, Mr. Chairman, every abortion is a tragedy.
▶ 0:29:28I don't believe that our nation can live up to its role as a moral authority around the globe when we have hundreds of thousands if not million abortions per year in our country and uh under President Trump's leadership I have ended federal funding to the kind of the programs that overseas programs that uh that fund abortions or counsel abortions And we
▶ 0:29:59have withheld the title 10 funding from NOS's that refuse to differentiate the funding streams so that the federal government and my agency can't tell whether money that is being sent to that agency is being used legitimate family planning uh uh issues or it's being used to counsel or fund abortion.
▶ 0:30:26And we have said that as soon as they make as soon as they differentiate that we would begin refunding them. I think at this point the administration is now uh fed up with that and uh and uh you know the budget that is proposed by OM is a budget that cuts out title 10 funding because they don't believe that these NOS's can actually in good faith comply with the law and with
▶ 0:30:56the EOS. Thank you. Well, um I appreciate that and like I said, I appreciate your your commitment to that for the for the president's uh vision. Um one of the most significant challenges facing rural hospitals uh is the area wage index uh which is used of course by the uh center for Medicare and Medicaid services.
▶ 0:31:19Um and as you know under the reimbursement formula used by CMS uh mandates that the area wage index remain budget neutral and high high wage hospitals receive a higher reimbursement rates whereas lower uh low wage hospitals receive a lower reimbursement rate. This system has the perverse result of preventing low-wage hospitals, many of which are in rural areas and underserved communities, from paying higher wages.
▶ 0:31:50By keeping these hospitals at the lower end of the wage spectrum, they cannot compete against higher paying hospitals, increasing their risk of closure, which I referred to earlier, and locking them into a downward spiral. During the first Trump administration, CMS attempted to address this disparity. However, the Biden administration did not successfully defend the policy when it came to the courts.
▶ 0:32:17Therefore, rural hospitals again confront this downward spiral of uh the CMS CMS area wage index. Um, can you tell us if uh CMS has taken any steps under your leadership to review the impact of the area wage index on rural hospitals?
▶ 0:32:38And can I get your commitment to work with me and of course with administrator Oz on a solution to this very critical problem that's affecting so many rural hospitals? Uh, yes, Mr. Chairman. As you point out, the Trump administration and tried to address this disparity which is destroying rural healthcare. And as you know, many of these rural hospitals not only provide critical access to care.
▶ 0:33:07Uh without them, patients would have to drive sometimes hours to get to an emergency room. They're absolutely critical in those regions. But there are also important economic drivers for many of those regions. and their their uh institutions that provide cohesion to communities.
▶ 0:33:28Oh, if we want to preserve rural America as a livable space with dignity, enrichment, prosperity, and good health that they deserve. We need to keep those hospitals in uh and those um uh treatment uh institutions in good shape, in good financial. We need to keep them financially viable.
▶ 0:33:53The Trump administration, the initial Trump administration 2016 to 2020 tried to do that. Unfortunately, as had to address disparities. Unfortunately, as you know, as you pointed out, the Biden administration did not robustly respond to a court challenge and we got a very bad decision from that. said that my agency has no power to address this disparity.
▶ 0:34:22Um, but I pledge to work with you and with Congress. It change has to statutory and we will do our job at prov providing technical support including the kind of studies that you just mentioned that show that how badly this disparity is wounding rural America. Yeah. Well, thank you.
▶ 0:34:45And like I said, someone who represents rural state, u it is it is certainly I I hear about it almost every day or very frequently. So, I appreciate your commitment to that. U with that, let me recognize the ranking member, Mr. Loro. Thank you very much. Uh Mr. Chairman, let me just one area of correction which has to do with the measles issue. Mr. Secretary, you keep comparing the US to other countries.
▶ 0:35:10um if you compare us to Europe, but that the Europe you are referring to is the WH European region has 53 countries in Europe and in Asia including those with low vac vaccination rates like Romania that has never eliminated measles. If you compare us to Western Europe countries that we often compare ourselves to like Great Britain, they have seen no measles death this year. Let me move to the NIH.
▶ 0:35:34In your testimony, you say um you want to quote uh and I quote, "Rescale our biomedical research budget unquote." Excuse me, but that's BS. You are not rescaling NIH research. You are proposing to cut it by 20 billion. And according to our colleagues in the Senate, NIH has effectively cut research funding by $2.7 billion this year in comparison to the same period last year. That's a cut of 35% during that period.
▶ 0:36:03That includes cutting cancer research by 31%. This is the report put out by the Senate, Trump's war on science, which goes into detail about how we are in fact um dealing with cutting uh scientific research. Mr. Secretary, are you freezing or withholding funding that Congress appropriated in 2025 for lifesaving NIH research?
▶ 0:36:29Uh let me uh address your first uh issue first because I want to correct you. We have about 1100 measles cases in this country. The growth rate last year was 15 additional. So we have plateaued. Mexico has roughly the same number with a third of our population and they got 300 extra quick cases last week. Canada has more measles,500.
▶ 0:36:58They have 1/8 of our population. Your Western Europe has about 6,000 which is 10 times the number that we have. Well, oh, you are wrong about what you said earlier. We can we can discuss that. But I I I think one has to consider whether or not we're dealing with with decades of data proving how effective and safe um the measles vaccine is. I want to move to that.
▶ 0:37:21I want my questions answered on are you freezing and withholding funding that Congress appropriated in 2025 for life-saving NIH research. We are not withholding any funding for life-saving research. Okay. Do you commit to following the law? Of course. Fully obligating funding that Congress appropriated.
▶ 0:37:42We appropriated it is the law of the land for NIH research and to obligate those funds by September 30th of this year or are you planning to break the law by impounding congressionally appropriated funds? If you appropriate me the funds, I'm going to spend them. We are we have we have in the bill you are cutting the NIH by $18 billion or you're proposing to cut it by$20 billion. The Congress appropriated those funds. It passed into law.
▶ 0:38:13It's part of the 2024 budget and we are under a continuing resolution that has adopted the 2024 numbers. How then can you justify cutting $20 billion from the biomed research budget? If you appropriate the money to me, I'm going to spend that. We have appropriated, Mr. Secretary. I'm going to spend it. Then you're going to spend you're not going to cut $20 billion from the NIH.
▶ 0:38:39The White House proposal is to do very very large cuts at NIH. Well, that is in that is contrary to the money appropriated ranking member. Yes. If Congress appropriates me the money, I'm going to spend the money. You have the power of the purse here. Thank you. You know that. Thank you for reiterating that. But I think that I'm not sure the administration really has internalized that. Particularly Mr.
▶ 0:39:05vote hasn't internalized that when he says that we can we we can in fact impound money the money is there the 2024 budget includes the funding for the NIH will you commit to spending the money that is in 2024 in that budget as I said ranking member if you appropriate the money I'm going to spend that money the money has been appropriated so the answer to that is if you're not willing to accept the funds that have been lawfully voted
▶ 0:39:35by members of the House and Senate on the money for the National Institutes of Health. We're going to hold you to your word that that funding is there. It should be transferred from 24 to 25 and you've cut already $20 billion. Let's get that money back. Let's get that money back. You have an obligation to carry out the law and to implement what the Congress has what the Congress has Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
▶ 0:40:06Chronic disease and tobacco. Tobacco use is a major contributor to chronic disease and is a leading preventable cause of death in our nation each year, killing nearly 500,000 Americans, costing the nation nearly $250 billion in health care costs. CDC's tips from former smokers media campaign alone is estimated to have saved more than 7 billion in health care costs by helping more than$1 million smokers quit.
▶ 0:40:31Why did you eliminate CDC's Office of Smoking and Health, an office that reduces the number of kids using tobacco products, helps audit tobacco users to quit, and saves taxpayers dollars? uh we have under the reorganization and I'm going to talk very very broadly because as of 4:00 yesterday afternoon we are under a court order not to do any further planning on the reorganization and
▶ 0:41:02I've been advised by my attorneys and not to talk about it but I will just say broadly many of the programs that the Democrats are now saying were cut at CDC were not cut at all. Those programs were transferred to the Administration for Healthy America. But I'm not allowed I'm not permitted to talk in any more detail because of a court order. I I I know we're we're we're just dealing with words. You transfer it here.
▶ 0:41:31There's less money overall for the agency. Therefore, there's less money for the programs. In both 2024 2025, Congress again, power of the purse resides here, appropriating $246 million for CDC's prevention program, tobacco prevention programs. Do you commit to following the law again, fully obligating those funds so that we can help adults who want to quit using tobacco and prevent teens from becoming addicted?
▶ 0:41:56Allow me to answer that by pointing out the absolute absolute cataclysmic disorganization of this agency under your oversight for 40 years. We had nine separate spend nine separate offices of women's health. When we consolidate them, the Democrats say we're eliminating them. We're not. We're still appropriating the 3.7 billion, but we're not keeping all nine.
▶ 0:42:25We had eight separate offices for minority health. We eliminated one. We had 27 HIV offices. Okay, let let me just I'm going to We had 59 behavior. I'm well over time. If you could just get us what has been eliminated, why you're doing it, and the criteria by which the elimination has occurred. That is information that this committee needs in order to be able to do our job in terms of appropriating funds. Thank you. and we will gladly provide that to you.
▶ 0:42:52But right now, we're under a court order that prohibits us from doing so. And also, okay, before we go, I just want to say we also need to make sure that we we bear in mind that he's the secretary is here talking about FY26 funding. So, um um he he is committed to that. So, u I just want to make sure that we're all clear. We're talking about FY26 on this. Um Mr. thank you, Mr.
▶ 0:43:17chairman and uh thank you secretary for being here and thanks for uh taking on what uh is a huge task. You've done that before in your history and uh I look forward to you know most of the people I talked to are in favor of uh Maha and making Mary uh making America healthy again. I agree with a lot of the things you've said, some of the things I question want to see more studies on. Uh and there's probably a couple in there that I might disagree with, but that's okay.
▶ 0:43:44uh opening this debate of how we can make America healthy again is is very important. Let me ask a couple questions. I chair the interior committee that funds Indian Health Services, which is in your department. I noticed in your opening statement uh you want to maintain the level of funding for Indian Health Services uh to keep the promises that we've made to our our Native American, Alaskan natives. That's not just a promise. That's a legal obligation we have with those. Those are treaty rights.
▶ 0:44:11Uh so we've been doing uh a great deal in my bill increasing uh funding for Indian health services. We also did something that was called forward appropriations so that they have appropriated a year in advance because we found that during shutdowns and those kind of things they weren't protected like other health organizations were and stuff. Your skinny budget uh and I don't I haven't seen your full budget yet.
▶ 0:44:38Do you maintain that uh forward appropriation for Indian health services? Yeah. Yes. Uh Congressman, you know, I want to out I spend 20% of my career working on tribal issues on uh representing the tribes in treaty negotiations and in litigation against big polluters, the extractive industry and others.
▶ 0:45:01Um I was one of the founding editors of Indian country today which is the largest Indian newspaper in Indian country and my uh it's been an issue that I'm committed to my whole life.
▶ 0:45:15Um, I fought successfully to uh to to exempt the Indian Health Service from the probationary freezes, from the fork in the road, the early retirement, from the riffs, and from all of the downsizing.
▶ 0:45:33And I also made an opportunity that people who at my agency who lost their jobs in other parts of the agency from the riffs, etc., uh could transfer to Indian Health Service because Indian Health Service is chronically under staff. It's very very difficult to find competent personnel who will will move to Indian country or to distant locations. I'm committed to protecting it.
▶ 0:45:57I'm committed to working with you to make sure that um that we can finally make this work for a population that is not only probably, you know, among the most agrieved in our history, but also a population that suffers more from chronic disease that have the has the shortest lifespan, the highest rates of diabetes, the highest rates of alcoholism of any other population.
▶ 0:46:23And um and you know, one of my big priorities will be getting good food, high quality food and traditional foods onto the reservation because processed food or American Indians is poison. Yep. It and getting they're finding that the way to attack diabetes on reservations was have the highest rate is by going back to their traditional foods. Yeah. I mean I'll I'll say one thing. The Pandians were most were blue zone in Arizona. longest lived people on the continent.
▶ 0:46:54Today they're among the shortest lived. I think the lifespan at around 47 years old, the highest rate of diabetes, second in the world. About 80% of adults are diabetic have uh chronic obesity. Right across the border in Mexico, there are pime Indians who are still long lived, have no diabetes, no heart disease, no obesity because they're not being fed ultrarocessed food. Ultrarocessed food is a genocide on the American Indian and we have to end it. Yeah, I agree.
▶ 0:47:24One other subject that I want to talk about is the reorganization of NIH into fewer institutes. Uh there are some institutes that are concerned that they're going to be left out of this uh reorganization. The division of oral health uh at the CDC is concerned about uh the lack of focus on oral health.
▶ 0:47:45Uh, will you that preserving the congressionally appropriated funding and upholding the autonomy of the National Institutes of Dental Cran Cranioacial Research and other institutes until Congress completes a thorough review of the NIH restructuring? I don't know what the OM budget says about dental health, but I can tell you that I'm com I am deeply committed to dental health.
▶ 0:48:13There are so much new science out there that shows how dental health is is intricately related to health in the rest of the body to the microbiome to the brain health. So, and I you know we want to do those kind of studies to make sure that we understand that and we need to make a big commitment to dental health. I appreciate that and I look forward to working with you on that and making sure that you know most diseases can act actually uh express themselves in the oral cavity first.
▶ 0:48:42Yes, it can be detected there. Uh, I am concerned about the fluoride issue. Uh, I've seen the benefits having been a practicing dentist for 22 years. I just noticed this morning that the FDA brings action to remove ingestable fluoride prescription drug products for children from the market. And I, as I'm reading through this, I want to see some of these studies, but it says the best way to prevent cavities in children is by avoiding excessive sugar intake and good dental hygiene. Obvious.
▶ 0:49:07Then it says, "For the same reason that fluoride may kill bacteria on teeth, it may also kill intestinal bacteria important to children's health." I would tell you, you don't prevent cavities by fluoride killing the bacteria in the mouth. What it does is make the enamel more resistant to decay. So, I want to see the studies on this and and where we're headed with this. And I will tell you that if you are successful in banning fluoride, I noticed you graduated Utah and Florida, I think, for for banning it.
▶ 0:49:38That's up to them. They can do what they want. But we better put a lot more money into dental education because we're going to need a whole lot more dentists. I I think that you know Marty McCary's concern with ingestable fluoride is that the emerging science shows the benefits to uh of fluoride to cares and to the and to uh cavity prevention comes from uh topical exposures rather than it was once thought that it was systemic that if you ingested it that the benefit came from that.
▶ 0:50:08We now know that virtually all the benefit is from topical and we can get that through mouthwashes. We can get through toothpastes. National toxicity program issued a report in August, a meta review of all the science that now exists on fluoride and showed a direct inferous correlation between fluoride exposure dose related and lower IQ is an issue that we have to all be concerned with. We want high IQ kids right now. I appreciate that.
▶ 0:50:38I look forward to working with you on it. Okay. As promised, I returned. You and MacArthur. Yeah, me and MacArthur. I'm not going to ask questions about specific issues about which I'm very concerned. I subscribe, frankly, to the remarks that Mr. Loro, our ranking member, made. However, Mr. Secretary, with reference to my concerns about what is happening. First of all, let me ask you this. Sorry about that.
▶ 0:51:07Uh, you submit a budget, it goes to OMB, the president will submit it to us. Um, and Congress passes a budget, sends it to the president, presumably the president signs it. Once that happens, do you consider that budget that Congress passes to be a suggestion or Well, as far as I'm concerned, it's the president's budget, and my duty is to defend it.
▶ 0:51:33It's Congress's choice about whether or not they're going to fund, you know, Congress appropriates the funding. Oh, if there listen, no, there is Congressman, there's no agency ad that I know of that wants to see his agency gutted or his uh or his budget lowered. Um there's tremendous waste in my agency. You know, it grew by 38% during the Biden administration and public health went down. Okay, I got five minutes. Right.
▶ 0:52:03But I just say this, President Trump has a broader vision than me, which is that the $2 trillion we're spending a year that we don't have is landing on our children, that is a health crisis for them. Mr. Secretary, my question to you respectfully was, do you believe it is suggestion or a mandate? This is a very important issue uh which we differ greatly with the administration and with Mr.
▶ 0:52:30Musk that willy-nilly without Congress's approval, they can remove things, take things away, defund things, fire people. Uh that is not my proposition. I want to know whether it is your proposition. You you've answered in the sense that once the budget is adopted, you need to carry it out. Now, whether that was President Trump that signed that budget or President Biden that signed that budget, I presume your premise is the same. Well, is that correct?
▶ 0:52:57I I mean I I don't know whether you're asking me a rhetorical question because I think it's not a rhetorical question. It's whether or not you think once the Congress says we're going to spend X number of dollars on X object Y objective that you will follow that. Yes. Okay. That's the answer I wanted. incidentally that happens throughout history. You know the Republican Well, throughout history, Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, you and I know this.
▶ 0:53:26Uh uh Mr. Nixon said that was not the law that he could take whatever we and he took it as a suggestion and he wanted to impound and he did impound in the early 70s and we passed an act that said you can't do that. Then the Supreme Court heard that case.
▶ 0:53:45Uh and very frankly one of the most conservative judges, Justice Scalia said, President Nixon, the Mahatma Gandhi of all impounders, asserted at a press conference in 1973 that his right to impound appropriated funds was absolutely clear.
▶ 0:54:05Scalia went on to say, "Our decision two years later in Train versus City of New York proved him wrong." That opinion has been reiterated by the Supreme Court subsequent to those that decision. Uh this is a critically important issue because there are conflicting opinions. We will try to come to consensus on that. President has to sign the budget unless we override his veto of the budget. that becomes the law.
▶ 0:54:34We think and a lot of courts over the last two months have decided that that law is not being followed. So that was my point. Now let me ask you something. You've you've reduced the uh department by 20,000 people as I understand it. Uh you've been quoted as saying some of those firings were mistakes.
▶ 0:54:54In fact, of course, Musk fired 70% of the people when he bought Twitter and then brought a large number of them back because he found out, as you point out, not that with respect to that, but respect to these 20,000 people, there were mistakes. Um, my question to you is, have you had an analysis prior to making those decision or Mr. Musk making those decisions? And I ask you first, who made those decisions, you or Musk? They were made.
▶ 0:55:24I mean ultimately we executed the decisions. I know you executed them but my question Elon Musk gave us help in try in figuring out where there was ways, fraud and abuse in the department but it was us up to it was up to me to make the decision and there are many instances where I pushed back and said we don't want to you know that would hurt us to eliminate that group. Let me ask you a question based upon that response.
▶ 0:55:51Uh was there a um an analysis of the consequences of these cuts and the reduction in force and elimination of programs? Was there an analysis you can provide the committee that indicated those uh as you concluded in your statement would not harm uh people would not undermine frankly the people who are being served health care not delivered people not served children not educated research not
▶ 0:56:21accomplished frankly lives not saved. Is there an analysis that you can provide to this committee prior to us determining the budget that will show that in fact those cuts will not be harmful to those objectives? Yeah, I mean yeah there were there were analysis. The simplest analysis was at the outset the analysis that we're spending $2 trillion a year that we don't have. Mr. M said he was going to cut spending $2 trillion more than you have. You have to make cuts.
▶ 0:56:48the other analysis that was more detailed because that children or the Indians that you're so concerned about. We didn't cut the Indians. We didn't cut the Indian services. I'm asking you. You said we have to cut. I made sure that those services were not cut. I made sure that Head Start was not cut and and I and but the the cuts that were done were cuts that were to duplication to redundancy to streamlining.
▶ 0:57:19We increased our workforce 70% four years. So we were going back to the 2019 levels. Mr. Reagan, and I would ask Mr. Reagan said he was going to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. He increased the budget deficit by 189% the highest of any president in history. No analysis.
▶ 0:57:36I'm um I am we you know we're allotted five minutes and I am trying to be lenient you know instead of cutting somebody off in mids sentence but if y'all could be respectful to me to so that we we can sort of wrap up when I start tapping. So uh anyway uh let me recognize Mr. Flashman. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, good morning. I'm Chuck Flashman. to represent the third district of Tennessee. That's East Tennessee, Chattanooga, Oak Ridge.
▶ 0:58:03Uh want to thank you for stepping up in this important role and serving our great president, President Trump, in all of your endeavors. Um I want to um begin uh with a thank you because I am going to have some some questions later about about some other issues but thanking you for the center for Medicare and Medicaid innovation under HHS.
▶ 0:58:28Um what it does with Oakidge uh which was the birthplace of the Manhattan project u Oakidge National Laboratory in my district. Um it works to make sure that the energy employee occupational illness compensation program at the Department of Energy is run well and it is. This keeps our hardworking civilian employees insured and cared for long after their years of service. So that's a profound thank you to you and yours for running that so well. Um, Mr.
▶ 0:58:58Secretary, um, I'm going to talk a little bit um about, um, the Food and Drug Administration. Uh, that is under my dear colleague and friend Andy Harris's jurisdiction, I chair Energy and Water. Uh, but while I have you here, Mr. Secretary, I know the FDA has taken significant steps to ban or phase out synthetic food colorings over the years, and I respect that. The current colors, though, Mr.
▶ 0:59:24secretary that are used and have been approved by FDA have been deemed safe for many years. Candidly, I represent many uh snack manufacturers uh I'm a big fan of the oatmeal cream pie um and um uh in in many ways. Uh I have um I have uh M&M's in my district. I know you're going to come and visit me in in a couple of weeks. we can all have some M&M's and and Little Debbies together.
▶ 0:59:54U but but on a very serious note, uh we want to make sure that FDA has done due diligence to ensure the safety of these replacement colors. Will you work with me on that? Because candidly, I think these dyes are safe. They've been approved, but really trying to find substitutes. The costs we've seen estimates five to 10 times try to fix that. Will you work with me on that, sir? Yeah, absolutely.
▶ 1:00:19Congressman and uh one of the I think the really important accomplishments that we've done over the past 100 days is we've been working with the food industry and we found the food industry very very receptive. We think we have good science that links almost all of these dies with ADHD with neurological injury with cancer.
▶ 1:00:43Um but and they've agreed to phase out the two worst of them which is uh orange be and red citrus number uh three um within two months and then the other uh seven dies within two years and some of the food companies like Tyson's food have already eliminated them because of our talks. They asked us to do one thing.
▶ 1:01:10They said, "Can we try to fasttrack the vegetable dye substitutes that we need?" And we have fa fasttracked those and we've already got them approved. So, we have three dyes approved this week that are substitute dies that can be used by the food industry. And we're going to continue to respond to the needs of the food industry. We're going to continue to work with them and I'm happy to work with you, Congressman. And I thank you. I thank you for your question and and and your answer and your response.
▶ 1:01:40Uh Mr. Secretary, I wanted to talk with you about this subcommittee's oversight of the 340B drug discount program. I'm a strong supporter of that. Uh I have hospitals in my district. Uh it provides funding to safety net community health centers, hospitals, and other healthc care providers u with discounts from prescription drug sales. Um CHEs and rural hospitals across Tennessee have become dependent upon this program. Uh just a question sir.
▶ 1:02:07We've heard that this department will uh move oversight from HERSA to CMS. Can can you either confirm or deny that sir? I can't because of the court order, but I I can tell you we under, you know, the 340B program, as you know, is a um it's not a straightforward program because it was uh intended to for 100 institutions that were serving very poor communities.
▶ 1:02:37It's now grown to 27,000 institutions. the patients themselves seldom get the benefits of the drug reduction and actually a 100,000 if you look at all the kind of satellite institutions but we also recognize that it is the lifeblood of rural hospitals right now so we can't mess with that program without giving those rural hospitals something else that is going to support them and we understand that thank you I can tell you that
▶ 1:03:07the drug companies are worried Because if we do what President Trump wants, which is, you know, through compliance with the executive order to go to most favored nation, it will lower the price of all drugs, which means it will further lower the cost of 340B drugs, and they consider that existential. So that is a problem that we all need to work out together. Mr. Pokean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Secretary. Um, I'm Mark Pokean. I represent the second congressional district of Wisconsin.
▶ 1:03:38all are part of five um or six, I'm sorry, six counties in South Central Wisconsin. I I don't know you and I think it's important to have a good working relationship with you because of everything that you have. Uh there's a lot of jurisdiction. You've definitely got your hands full with a lot. Um some things I think we agree on and some things I'm not sure if we do. So, I'm really trying to explore a little bit of that. Um I think some things that we agree on and you brought it up, uh you want to have a special focus on chronic disease, correct? Yes. Yeah.
▶ 1:04:08Great. And uh one that maybe Chuck and I disagree a little bit on, but I support what you're doing on ultrarocessed foods, on food dyes, and other junk chemicals and promoting healthier diets. That's another focus. Correct. Yes. Um and also, I think you're supporting and making it easier to access non-farmaceutical, in other words, natural remedies, uh as part of a person's healthcare decision. Yes. And uh one I didn't have on the list, but I heard you tell Mr. Simpson on dental care.
▶ 1:04:33I have a constituent who because of a infection with a tooth is now getting meals on wheels and his health is destroyed. So I appreciate that as well. Yes. So in trying to get to know you um there's some public things that you know make you somewhat of a conundrum uh to people like me just trying to you know understand.
▶ 1:04:50one is on vaccines and I don't want to ask you about you know all the specific theories on vaccines but something that might be helpful is you've previously said you've vaccinated your children just because I think this is a helpful answer and this isn't a gotcha I promise um if you had a child today would you vaccinate that child for measles for measles um probably for measles I I you know what I would say is my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant I
▶ 1:05:20have directed Jay Bachara. Sure. No, like I said, I don't want to so that everybody can make that decision, but I, you know, I don't want to be seem like I'm being evasive. Yeah. But I don't think people should be taking advice, medical advice from me, right? No, I got that. And I'm not asking you to give the medical advice, but would you vaccinate your child for answer that question directly that it will seem like I'm giving advice to other people, and I don't want to be doing that.
▶ 1:05:47I want people to make but that's kind of your jurisdiction because CDC does give advice, right? I'm not trying to do it as a gotcha. I was just gonna what I think what we're going to try to do is to lay out the pros and cons, the risks and benefits accurately as we understand them. Okay. Can with replicable studies. Would you can you talk about chickenpox? Would you vaccinate your child against Um I again I don't want to give advice.
▶ 1:06:15I can tell you in Europe they don't use the chickenpox vaccine specifically because the pre-clinical trial shows that when you inoculate the population from chickenpox you get shingles in older people which is more danger just one last one just a yes or no please if it could polio polio again I don't want to be giving advice that's fair no fair I like I said I was not doing it as a gotcha and but it could be helpful if okay so let me ask this on the 988
▶ 1:06:46hotline. Um, in your budget, you have eliminated there was a special button you could press for LGBTQ plus youth. Um, you know, I'm an openly gay man. Uh, I deal with a lot of organizations that deal with this. You know, the suicide rate among LGBT youth is four times nationally the rate of other youth.
▶ 1:07:02Um, this is one where I hope that we could try to, like Chuck asked, work together to try to, um, see if we could have a conversation about not eliminating this because, uh, unfortunately, uh, because of the bullying that's out there because of honestly adults bullying both in Congress and state legislators, uh, these kids are often uh, at unique risk and having that specific button they can push helps them to be able to get that service.
▶ 1:07:29Is that something we could talk about at least trying to I'm happy to talk to you about it and I love the way that you approach this in a way that rather than attacking me is you know reaching out and I you know I'd love that from other Democrats because I think we have a lot to talk about the as you know and you know I like that you I just because I am short on time the 988 line is you know was created by President Trump he believes strongly in it.
▶ 1:07:55The reason he removed that button is because we don't want to isolate different demographics and polarize our country. Everybody on that line is strange in cultural sensitivities. Sure. I got you. I I just would love to talk to you because I think this is a unique one and I I respect that we could have conversation. Last one just because I'm down to 22 seconds. I lost a little time there. Um Medicare Advantage. I know you know the Trump administration is going after waste, fraud, and abuse. This is a program we had a lot of constituent complaints on. It costs more than Medicare.
▶ 1:08:24It was intended to find savings. It doesn't. In fact, I think the current estimate is $80 billion in overp payments have gone to private insurers. Are you committed to one going after those overpayments and two if Medicare advantage uh isn't more cost effective? Would we have a conversation about either eliminating the program or making it more effective? Medicare Advant I mean I definitely want to go after the waste fraud abuse and the private sector.
▶ 1:08:51There's 30 million people who who who want Medicare Advantage. I have Medicare Advantage. It works very well for me. I like I But it costs more and that's the point. It does. I mean, I think our administrative costs are still far less than private industry, but it costs more than Medicare and that's my point. So that's all I was but the services are much better. Uh okay. Another thing if we can talk about and continue conversation, I am sincere about wanting having a working relationship with you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you. Thanks. Appreciate it, Miss Spice.
▶ 1:09:21Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being with us this morning. I first want to address a comment that was made by the ranking member earlier as it relates to getting the president's budget out. Just a reminder that uh when President Biden was elected, he did not res uh send out his first presidential budget until May 28th of 2021. So, giving some grace to a new administration, I think, is warranted.
▶ 1:09:45Um, I want to take a minute to highlight um, the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, or for short, OMRF. OMRF was chartered nearly 79 years ago and started out with 18 scientists on staff. They now have more than 475 which it's the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, and I've actually given your uh, your team some information.
▶ 1:10:10Last month, I was proud to attend a ribbon cutting for their new biomedical data sciences uh center, which will provide computing and data an analysis capabilities to support scientists in researching very important areas including heart disease, uh cancer and autoimmune diseases. This center uh cementss OMRF as a leader in research methods and as a hub for collaboration in my district.
▶ 1:10:36Uh it is important that OMRF continue their partnership with HHS in their research to expand life expectancy and healthc care outcomes across the nation. Uh the the impact that OMRF has had on Oklahoma and the country is really immeasurable. Uh it ranged from certainly economic impacts to healthc care advancements, community engagement. Um the the positive impacts are endless.
▶ 1:11:03And um I want to mention them because uh you know I want to make sure that we're investing in the right things. Uh like you and President Trump, I am focused on reducing the prevalence of chronic diseases and the discoveries that they have made o over the last many years have produced three life-changing drugs. Most recently in 2019 the FDA approved the first targeted therapy to treat cickle cell disease.
▶ 1:11:29Uh and this is based on discoveries by OMRF The point being here, Mr. Secretary, OMRF has been uh crucial in advancing research and treatment of chronic dise and rare diseases for millions. Uh and they take pride in being one of seven NIH autoimmune centers of excellence. And I hope you and your team will continue to work with OMRF so they they can continue the positive impact in Oklahoma uh and across the country to make America healthy again.
▶ 1:11:58Um, that being said, in order for the US to maintain its lead in biotechnology, we need to ensure that the US continues to be the country of choice for best and brightest in the field. What will HHS do to help attract biotech researchers?
▶ 1:12:15Well, we spend already at this juncture 70% of the research funding in the world on biotech and and uh biomedical research is coming from my agency and we understand that it's our aspiration that the United States remain the hub of biotechnology around the globe.
▶ 1:12:39We need to uh change some of the FDA policies to make it uh to give a faster track for biotechnologies to get approved. We're working on that now. Um we're trying to reform phase three studies for example which are the longest the most uh expensive to to uh to s to to do a lot of those functions by AI.
▶ 1:13:06uh we phased out we're phasing out most animal studies at NIH and FDA which again is a very expensive part of the process and uh and because we can accomplish a lot of those goals on safety and efficacy with AI technologies we brought the best AI developers in the country into HHS. Nothing like this has ever happened before.
▶ 1:13:31people walking away from billion-dollar concerns to come and work for us to transform our agency into a central hub for AI on the globe. And so and a lot of that those changes are designed to make it easier and faster to get um you know biotechnology to market. Perfect. Can you talk a little bit about the changes at NIH in particular? I know that there's been a lot of conversation around that.
▶ 1:13:57Certainly streamlining is part of that, but can you talk a little bit more about what your vision is for NIH moving forward? Well, NIH, you know, has when I was a kid, NIH was the premier gold standard scientific institution in the world.
▶ 1:14:13over the years was captured by industry and by I think a kind of oification that happened at uh because of the longevity of some of the leadership there and there was a tremendous amount of corruption and you know part of that corruption is we now have the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Energy and the Department of State all saying that the CO 19 pandemic came out of research that was then sent over to
▶ 1:14:43China and that was the end point. We also have the sickest people in the world. NIH with the best science is supposed to be protected. We should be the healthiest people in the world. We're switching the the trajectory so that we're going to really focus narrowly on chronic disease, ending the chronic disease epidemic, and then we're going to make sure that the science cannot be corrupted, that every scientific study is replicated, that the raw data for those studies is published,
▶ 1:15:13that the peer review for those studies is published, and that we're going to focus on on making sure that we get to younger scientists rather than the old boys network. Uh, and I could talk to you about scientific corruption all day long about horror stories that we know have happened with NIH. One of those probably the worst is the amaloid black scandal. For 20 years, we were because of utter corruption and fraud.
▶ 1:15:40We were directing Alzheimer's research to one hypothesis and any other hypothesis was shut down. We should have the cure for Alzheimer's today. We don't have it purely because of corruption at NIH. Miss Frank, you are gonna have a quick m Miss Franklin. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. Thank you. Welcome, Mr. Secretary. Before I ask my questions, I I just want to make this statement. Draconian abortion restrictions are killing and maming women, and that is a tragedy. You don't need to respond to that.
▶ 1:16:10I want to thank you for being here. I I'm I just want, you know, I'm going to try to ask my questions as kindly as possible. Do not take them personally. Uh, in the past I've believed I won't take your kindness personally. Okay. Well, whatever. You know, they say if you can't take a joke, don't go into politics. Uh, so let me start by saying in the past I have believed very strongly in the mission of the Department of Health and Human Services.
▶ 1:16:38Funding this department should be one of our highest priorities because if it's run correctly, it has the power to save lives, advance life-changing research, and protect the health and well-being of our families, especially our most vulnerable, our children, our seniors.
▶ 1:16:52Uh but to be straightforward as this my colleagues know in other words my my my I am deeply wary of giving $1 to this administration under the current leadership especially because it seems to be a disregard of science and most importantly ignoring the body of government that appropriates funding. That's us, the Congress. In just a few short months, we've seen a level of chaos and destruction.
▶ 1:17:20I compare it to a tornado hitting a populated community without the consent of Congress which appropriated funds with Elon's Mus chainsaw. Medical research has been gutted. Clinical trials have been halted. Billions of research grants have been yanked without warning. Preventative health programs, those that keep people he healthy and out of hospitals been slashed to the bone. And I'm from Florida where we have one of the largest senior populations in the country. and I'm particularly alarmed.
▶ 1:17:50Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease, these are not abstract concerns. Research has been stopped. And these are everyday fears of millions of of Americans, including my own constituents. And so, uh, we we've seen the firing of thousands of scientists and other professionals.
▶ 1:18:11All this to do t to give tax breaks to our healthy healthiest our wealthiest citizens who are also probably our wealthiest citizens and to me that is unconscionable and dumb. So I this should not be a partisan issue really because uh doesn't matter what what political party you are. People want to and should be healthy.
▶ 1:18:32But the Trump administration ideological dismantling of a public infrastructure must go in a different direction for me to vote for your budget. Now I have a few questions for you. Uh I think you I think you said that the decision for all these cuts was done in a by a varied amount of people. Were any of the cuts made before you were uh sworn into office? Were you handed do you remember that?
▶ 1:19:01Were people fired before you was All right. Well, what' you say? I think so, but I can't tell you. Okay, let me ask you this. Was any member of Congress or anyone on this committee consulted before the cuts were made? And could you tell me who you talked to here? I mean, I stayed in pretty close touch with Bill Cassidy during Okay. Well, I'm asking if anybody here because you're here. You're asking us for money. We appropriated the funds.
▶ 1:19:31Did you talk to any of us, Democrat, Republican? You know what? They're actually some very bright Republicans. I will say that on both sides of the aisle. So the answer to that question is no. So your decisions were they based on merit or generated by an algorithm did a somebody can Elon Musk computer and say okay just make 20% cuts. Do you know if I mean I disagree with your entire characterization.
▶ 1:19:58It was like the resitation of a narrative that you know everybody knows out there and it's the Democratic party. I'm just ask you a question. It's just not true. We weren't cutting thousands of scientists. We weren't cutting clinical trial. I mean, everything I you said was essentially ours. All right. That's that's my point. Don't take that personally. So So don't take it personally, Mr. Secretary. How many employees have been let go so far? Excuse me.
▶ 1:20:25How many employees have been let so let go so far from your about 10,000 left, took the fork in the road, and about 10,000 more. And how many are on administrative leave now? waiting to be fired in June. Well, that would be the second 10,000. Okay. So, and they're currently being paid. Yes. Yeah. So, they're being paid to do nothing. Well, they're they're a lot of them are supposed to be coming in still. But they're coming in to do nothing because they don't they're not allowed to work. Oh, no. No. We want them working.
▶ 1:20:53Are are you are you empowered to reverse these decisions? Yes. You are. Okay. And how was the 15% indirect research cost cap decided? 15% research there's now a re a 15 that that's pretty much about uh three to two to three points above industry standard. So we were just I mean if the if you're the Gates Foundation and you give a scientific grant to Stanford you're you're getting you're giving them a 10% in direct research.
▶ 1:21:24You'd base this on the Gates Foundation. No. All of the Rockefeller Foundation all of the other foundations that give to biomedical research. One more question. You're asking me a question, but you won't let me answer it. You've done very well. Very, very well. I just want to know, are you going to I can we can we trust you? If we give you if we put money into the budget for you, you're going to spend it the way we've directed it. Yes, that's what the law requires. Okay. Thank you.
▶ 1:21:53I yel back, Mr. Moore. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Secretary Kennedy, for being here. Um, so yesterday we had good news in West Virginia. I want to thank you and your team for working with the West Virginia delegation and especially my office to bring back Nyosh uh the facility in Morgantown.
▶ 1:22:16This facility and the programs it administers are absolutely critical to West Virginia and to our nation's coal industry. Uh, Mr. Secretary, my understanding is that the 111 employees at NYOS in Morgantown were reinstated earlier this week.
▶ 1:22:34Is that Yeah, I reinstated 328 employees at NYAsh, about um a little over a third of them were in uh Morgantown, and then about a third in Cincinnati. and then the uh World Trade Center group I also reinstated. Well, thank you for that.
▶ 1:22:58And um the black lung screening program and the coal workers health surveillance program are particularly important to West Virginia. My understanding is that the coal workers health surveillance program at NYOSH will be fully reinstated. Is that Yes, the program will be will continue to function with continuity. That's great. And uh thank you for that very much. And Mr.
▶ 1:23:24Secretary, it's my understanding that the programs for occupational safety and testing like the respiratory uh respirator, pardon me, testing programs will also be fully operational again. Is that accurate? Yes, that's accurate. Very good. Well, uh thank you so much for working with my office on that. as I stated, is critically important to our coal miners and their safety and the work that they're doing, which is hazardous, but very important to our country.
▶ 1:23:51And lastly, I do want to u and see I'm not going to take a lot of time here, Mr. Chairman. So, uh I do want to thank you for visiting my children's school, their Catholic school there in Martinsburg, West Virginia with our governor recently. my daughter was there on stage with you uh one of my kids and uh we had a great announcement there as it relates to food dyes and thank you for being there and being supportive of us and also just your generational service to this country.
▶ 1:24:17I'd be remissed if I didn't mention my close family friend who passed away just a few years ago who was your uh father's uh campaign manager in the state of West Virginia when he was running for president who u obviously left a huge impact on our state. Thank you for all the work you're doing to make America healthy again. We obviously need the help in West Virginia and thank you for all the support that you've come into the state, helped us support these programs that we're trying to bring back our folks to a healthy lifestyle and path.
▶ 1:24:46Thank you so very much for everything you're doing for this country and for West Virginia. Thank you, Congressman. I I've spent a lot of my career in West Virginia and it's and my family has deep roots there. my uncle, President Kennedy would not have been president had it not been for the people of West Virginia. And um that primary was the most critical primary and Wisconsin was the second one in 1960.
▶ 1:25:11And he always uh reminded us of that and I don't think any member of my family has ever forgotten and it's a joy for me to be able to spend time in your state. Well, thank you so much for that. There's a lot of great books written, by the way, on that primary in West Virginia. So, thank you so very much, Mr. Secretary. Miss Watson Coleman. Thank you, Chairman. Mr.
▶ 1:25:36Secretary, few things enrage me more than the racist attacks I see this administration carrying out by embarking on an ignorant crusade to rid the government of any programs that are working to improve the lives of black The administration has moved to ban the words black, race, bias, minority, oppression, pre prejudice, discrimination, disparity, and racism.
▶ 1:26:03Any grand application on federal programs that include these words had them immediately stripped. It is painfully clear to me that this in doing this, this administration that you work with and work for is attempting to legitimize racial discrimination. And that sir is a moral disgrace.
▶ 1:26:24It is not woke to improve the health and well-being of black people who dis are dis uh disparingly uh uh im impacted by just about every health issue. Um it should not be controversial to make right a health care system that was not built to help people like me. to take my concerns, my pain, my health very seriously in this country.
▶ 1:26:52Black women die from childbirth complications at a higher rate in this country than any other highincome country. And last year where there was overall maternal deaths dropping in this country, well, black women maternal deaths rose. This sickens me and it tells me that our government has so much more that we must do to focus on improving the lives of black women, not less.
▶ 1:27:19Your decision and justifications are damning uh and troubling particularly for destructive impacts your choices and benefits will have on poor minority of people.
▶ 1:27:34So tell me sir, how will eliminating minority health offices, how will eliminating initiatives and programs across the department that were created to look at the disparity in health care and the need to give greater attention to the fact that black folks experience in healthcare was very damaging, was very different.
▶ 1:28:02How exactly will HHS banning the words that we use to describe ourselves make us healthier? Uh, Congressman, President Trump's vision of this country is the same as Martin Luther King's that we should have administration. Uh, President Trump is deeply concerned about the maternal health crisis and the fact that black mothers uh are more likely to die in childbirth.
▶ 1:28:282.6 six times 260% more likely to die. Excuse me, sir. Let me claim my time because I don't need this rhetoric about Donald Trump and the lie that he cares about me and black people. What I want to know is the proposal. Your questioning my time, sir. Reclaiming it.
▶ 1:28:50I want to know specifically how do you intend to address those disparities and to overcome those disparities as it relates to black health in this country with the changes that you've decided are important or someone has decided for you. I don't know um with your department specifically, sir.
▶ 1:29:16I've spent a lifetime working on those priorities and I continue to do so. We have eight divisions, eight programs for minority health at HHS. We've closed one of those offices. We're maintaining the other seven. We have 42 programs for maternal health. We're going to close a couple of them and consolidate them. We're going to still spend $1.7 billion a year. The commitment is there. We're just reorganizing. Okay. You know what?
▶ 1:29:46The impact of reorganization is something that I shall continually ask you to show me. So, please let me warn you. Now, I welcome those inquiries and I don't want rhetoric. I want numbers. The other thing that really troubles me, sir, is lie he is a program specifically to address the needs of lowincome and minority families as it relates to heating and even air conditioning. Why? Why?
▶ 1:30:16Why? Why? And what is your rationale for eliminating that program specifically? Why? Why? Why? I'm very committed to lie. My brother ran a low. I don't care about your past. I care about your functioning in this department, in this administration right now. In response to this question, my time is expired.
▶ 1:30:46Oh, well then so has your legitimacy. I yield back. Mr. Secretary, thank you uh for being with us and I don't know if you want to follow up on any of that, but uh I I'd be happy to. Okay, feel free. As I was saying, I'm very conscious of the importance of lie to uh to poor people all across this country.
▶ 1:31:14My brother ran a lowcost nonprofit fuel company for most of his life that provides a lowcost fuel to people in New England. I've had many many people come up to me and said my life was saved because of that. I talked to Bo Ning Bu Nigran who's the president of Navajo Nation when I visited about three months ago and he said cuts to lie um will end up in killing people. So I understand the importance of this.
▶ 1:31:42I think OM's rationale was that uh President Trump's energy policy is going to reduce dramatically the cost of energy in this country and if that happens then lie heap is just another subsidy to the oil industry. If it doesn't happen then Congress is welcome and they should appropriate the money for lie heap and I will spend it.
▶ 1:32:05I already allocated $400 million from lie during the last 100 days and I will continue to do the and get the that that funding to the people who need it in this country if if the fuel costs do not go down. Great. Thank you for that reassurance. Uh Mr. Chairman, uh I want to submit an article uh for the record here a minute and I'll refer to it.
▶ 1:32:31Um but last month the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology concluded in its report to Congress that the Chinese Communist Party seeks to dominate the global biotechnology industry so that other countries including the United States are dependent on the channels it controls. China is already deeply embedded in the United States critical biotechnology supply chains including those for life-saving me medicines.
▶ 1:33:00And as you know, Secretary, China has a history of weaponizing supply chain dependencies for critical goods and medicines against countries. For example, in March 2020, following the arrival of CO 19 from China onto the American homeland, the CCP's mouthpiece, Shinua News, published a commentary proposing to throw the United States into a sea of Corona virus. And that's what I'd like to submit for the record. Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent.
▶ 1:33:31Yeah. No. Would you agree, Mr. Secretary, that overt reliance on the CCP and the US biotech and health ecosystem poses a threat and that we should be developing independent supply chains to protect the health and well-being of Americans so that we reduce our reliance on China for critical medicines and their active Yeah, absolutely. And this is a priority for me and for this administration.
▶ 1:33:59Um, China does not spend its u its biomed research money on DEI um or on other issues. They're they're directly and narrowly focused on creating dominance across the globe. We saw the problem with fi supply chain controlled by the Chinese during COVID.
▶ 1:34:20Um and also the Chinese have a specific program called the thousand talents program that is designed to steal US IP and technology and we have facilitated that at NIH by funding Chinese scientists with contracts that don't require them even to report their science back to our country but they give it direct Chinese military scientists on bioweapons research that we gave them the technology for This is how
▶ 1:34:50out of control NIH was under my predecessors. We are working very very hard and successfully to bring production home. We are, you know, I've met repeatedly with Eli Liy which is now building nine facilities, nine factories in this country, including for essential medicines, the ingredients, essential ingredients for those medicines.
▶ 1:35:16We are regularly meeting with all the other pharmaceutical CEOs and we've told them this is our priority. We want to produce all the all the parts all the essential medicines here in the United States and we have already launched a program to do that and it's already very very successful. Thank you Mr. Secretary.
▶ 1:35:33And then uh on the issue of medical counter measures uh I wondered if you could talk about challenges facing Barta the strategic national stockpile and how Congress can help you overcome any challenges in that arena. We have I mean you know Barta um we are redirecting BART so that it's going to do gold standard research.
▶ 1:35:56Barta has been very successful in the It produced over I think 103 FDA licensed um drugs or protocols or medical devices for national emergencies. We run the national stockpile which has uh 17 billion dollars worth of supplies.
▶ 1:36:16Some of those supplies are misaligned and we need to do a better job and we're going to do that at NIH to make sure we are prepared for all emergencies including radiological, chemical uh and um and biological emergencies and I would love to meet to work with you congressman on on helping us to achieve those goals. Wonderful. And then uh finally a couple of things.
▶ 1:36:41one is I want to compliment you on your commitment to public service and the way you've responded with grace towards people who have opposed some of your political views including some of your family members and I've kind of followed that.
▶ 1:36:56I want to really highlight the fact that your make America healthy again has has really put this in the spotlight in these chronic diseases and espec especially starting with children and um nutrition healthy lifestyles. I know our community health centers in my district which is a rural district want to work with you on those goals.
▶ 1:37:22uh what can we do to promote this with young children, healthy lunches, uh all sorts of areas where local communities can partner with you in this effort. We are about to reissue the dietary guidelines and we're going to do it very quickly. We have until January, but we're going to do it, I think we'll have it done even before August.
▶ 1:37:45And we took the Biden guidelines which were 453 pages long and were clearly written by industry that are incomprehensible driven by the same industry capture and those kind of carnal impulses that put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid. And we are changing that. So we're going to have four page dietary guidelines that tell people essentially eat whole food. Eat the food that's good for you.
▶ 1:38:13That's going to drive changes in the school lunch programs and we're going to need your help to make sure we can get good school lunches to Head Start. I've been touring these Head Start facilities. Everything they eat is in a package and it is just loaded with sugar and with chemicals. We're poisoning this generation, 800,000 kids, the poorest kids in our country, and we're starting them out with with this count against them with, you know, diabetes, pre-diabetes.
▶ 1:38:4138% of our youth now are diabetic or pre-diabetic. That was zero when I was a kid. Anybody thinks that we did gold standard medicine in this country from these institutions? Look at our children. They're the sickest children in the world. Lori, you say that you've you excuse me, Congressman Deloro, you say that you've worked for 20 years on getting food die out. Give me credit. I got it out in 100 days. I'll give you that credit.
▶ 1:39:12All right. So, let's work together and do something that we all believe in, which is have healthy kids in our country. For God's sake, that together it's not there's no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children. There's just kids and we should all be care. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Miss Dane, Mr. Secretary, Maline Dean, Suburban Philadelphia. Thank you for being here. I want to read the very first sentence of your written testimony which you have submitted.
▶ 1:39:42The mission of the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, is to enhance and protect the health and well-being of the American people. And we are here to analyze uh the 2026 budget uh request uh as the chairman points out. But 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.
▶ 1:40:07We 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. Uh I have to tell you that I'm more interested in substance than slogans. I'm getting a little lost in the MAGA, the maha, now there's aha. I don't know where we're going with this. I want to talk about the substance.
▶ 1:40:33And in this case, something very personal to me is the issue of addiction and mental health. And I know what you care deeply about these issues. I know you have been honest about your own recovery, uh, your own struggle with addiction. In my family, my middle son, Harry, is now 12 and a half years in recovery from opioid addiction. It was a long road. It was a hard road in active addiction.
▶ 1:41:00You know how difficult it is and it's difficult to bring a family member back. I give Harry great credit. He now works in the area of addiction. That's why I'm very, very worried about what is going on with SAMA. If you take a look at the data, the numbers, we were getting somewhere. Two years ago, three years ago, we were losing 110,000 people a year to overdose. That's 300 people a day.
▶ 1:41:28I call that a jetliner a day of souls crashing to this country. Just last year, the second half of 23 and the first half of 24, 12 months, that number went down 27% to 81,000 deaths of overdose. Don't let me minimize 81,000 deaths. That's still 220 people a day. Today, tomorrow, yesterday, 365 days a year.
▶ 1:41:56But a 27% reduction in overdose deaths in this country. Overdose is steal stealing a generation in this country. So why in God's name are we shuttering SAMA? We are not shuttering Samson. I I share your concerns and I'm anxious to work with you on this problem. I'm uh fully committed to it because of my own history. I lost a brother to uh to overdose.
▶ 1:42:25I lost one of my nieces during the pandemic to overdose. Like every family in this country has somebody that was lost. As you point out, we were losing, I think two years, three years 106,000 American kids. It's double the number that we lost during the 20-year Vietnam War. And we ought to be applying this. Why are the cuts to SAMA? And why are you shifting? We're not We're not We are not shuttering SAMA. We are still running 500 addiction centers.
▶ 1:42:53You've already cut SAMA and the budget proposal is to shutter it and shift it to an AHA program, which I don't know what AAHA means. To shift it to the Administration for Healthy America. We're shifting a lot of the program, chronic disease programs out of CDC into a center that will address chronic. And you and I agree that addiction is an ep uh overdose is an public health epidemic in this country. Yes.
▶ 1:43:22Then why would we when we are finally seeing some success bury that success put it in a aha program which by the way logically doesn't make any sense we have to now rehire people and figure out what their roles will be within AHA why wouldn't we analyze the data that shows we just saved 20 plus thousand lives in the course of one year this matters in my district I have buried way too many kids to overdose to fent Fentinyl poisoning.
▶ 1:43:52By the way, you don't have to be an addict. You can just be poisoned by fentinel. Why in God's name are this this administration wants to shutter it. We know that. And shift it into aha. Why would you do that? They don't want to shutter. What we want to do is we want to shift that function into a place where we're going to be able to administrate it more efficiently. And that's all. What's what analysis was done? Can you show us the study that led you to the decision? Shutter SAMA shift it.
▶ 1:44:20We call that uh shift and shaft in my old days as an appropriator in Pennsylvania. Shift it over here. Throw it in a block grant program and good luck. What's the analysis that you did that said whatever SAMA was doing with harm reduction by the way with making Nlloxxone available with training for Nlloxxone? I literally carry this with me every day. I want to normalize the life-saving capacity of Nlloxxone and you guys want to bury it in aha.
▶ 1:44:48Oh, we want to provide nlloxxone, naron. We want to make sure that addicts have every option. You're eliminating the training for that to suboxone to methadone and to medicated 12step programs to inpatient, outpatient. You're you're 500 program. We won 500 addiction centers. We're not going to stop doing that. My agency will still do it. Are you looking at way it's shifting to a subdivision where we can operate it more efficiently with other chronic diseases.
▶ 1:45:18But do you realize is going to do infectious disease which is why we created it. It had mission creep and it was operating with mission creep as it was saving lives. Miss mission Mr. Secretary I please I beg of you talk to these families. You know these families you are these families. Help us save more lives. Don't shift it and shaft it. Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Mr.
▶ 1:45:44Chairman, and thank you um Secretary Kennedy for appearing before our subcommittee today as we consider the future of Americans health in the Department of Health and Service Human Services. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss reforms that prioritize the health of our citizens while restoring transparency, accountability, and constitutional limits on federal power. For too long, federal health policy has been burdened by wasteful spending and ideological agendas undermining the scientific integrity and public trust.
▶ 1:46:12I'm encouraged by this administration's efforts to end the politicization of our health agencies and to bring common sense and accountability back to HHS. I also support the Make America Healthy Again initiative uh which addresses the consequences of misguided policies, poor nutrition standards, and harmful medical practices. Americans face record levels of obesity, chronic disease, mental illness, and pharmaceutical dependency.
▶ 1:46:39Secretary Kennedy, I commend your leadership in launching a commission to examine the root causes of these crises. But we cannot talk about restoring health without also confronting one of the most horrific scandals of our time. The trafficking and exploitation of children at our southern border, often under the watch of the very agency tasked with protecting them, HHS. The Biden administration dismantled critical safeguards, turning the unaccompanied alien children program into a pipeline for abuse.
▶ 1:47:09These are not bureaucratic oversightes. They are instances of state enabled child trafficking, and they must I support president the president's budget proposal to eliminate welfare benefits for illegal aliens and refocus the UAC program on its core mission and that is protecting vulnerable children from trafficking, labor exploitation and abuse.
▶ 1:47:32You know, no taxpayer dollar should fund these horrors and yet the Biden administration made the federal government the final link in the chain of child trafficking. So I want to ensure the money that we spend on health policy is guided by constitutional principles, rigorous science and the interests of the American people. So question my first question for you is do you know approximately how many children over the last four years have gone missing or remain unaccounted for after being released by HHS?
▶ 1:48:02the l the estimate uh congressman from the office of the inspector general and it's considered a very low estimate is 291,000 children missing 291,000 children but the estimate the the actual numbers are probably much higher than that they could go up to half a million and if you look at the u the grand jury report from uh from Florida uh what happened to many of those children
▶ 1:48:32is is just horrific. They were being my predecessor was deliberately employing a a policy of speed over safety. So they waved all of the identification requirements for sponsors. Sponsors were not required to show valid identification. They were never fingerprinted. So we didn't know if they had criminal records. There was no DNA testing.
▶ 1:49:00So, their claims that they were taking a family member were uh uh dubious at best. Yeah, they were. And they were dubious. And we in Cleveland, one of the according to the to the grand jury testimony in the grand jury findings in Florida, there so many episodes.
▶ 1:49:21One of them is a a man in Cleveland who picked up a 16-year-old girl claiming to be her brother, raped her, impregnated her, put her in a home where she was being regularly raped of all all men, and then went got a 16-year-old boy who disappeared and went back two other times for other children. This was happening again and again. One agency plays 592 children with 120 sponsors.
▶ 1:49:49400 children were shipped to a a town where there's a meat packing plant in Kansas. 400 children who you know they they had to come and claim that they sponsors had to claim that those children lived in that town was and we've seen the fake ID where you have one guy who is photoshopped in with a whole bunch of different children and he's showing up and picking up at these kids one at a time. The Biden administration knew about it.
▶ 1:50:19They saw the same pictures we did and they did nothing. There's 160,000 help complaints that were never investigated. I've launched now a criminal task force. We've opened up 500 criminal investigations and already brought 80 to court. So, we are going to try to find do everything we can. We're working with DHS to find these children.
▶ 1:50:42But the federal government under the Biden administration became the biggest facilitator for child abuse probably in the history certainly in the history of our country. Well, thank you. I was going to ask you, how are you going to hold these contractors and officials accountable, but I think you answered that question already. We're already doing fingerprinting on every sponsor. We're doing DNA testing on every sponsor. We're doing income testing on every sponsor. And we're doing valid ID testing.
▶ 1:51:10Nobody gets a kid without showing that they are a family member. Thank you. And I see my time has expired, so I yield back. Thank you for that excellent work. Thank Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Clyde. Uh Mr. Harter, thank you so much. Uh Secretary Kennedy, I'd like to start by talking about your personal story. You've talked openly about your battle with addiction, and I want to thank you for being so open about talking about your road to recovery. As you know, addiction is a real crisis.
▶ 1:51:38Tens of thousands of Americans died this year from overdoses. My community knows this all too well and all of us have been to far too many funerals. So, Secretary Kenny, I'd like to start by just grounding us in the reality of what treatment like that uh actually looks like. As I understand it, uh you were 15 up until when you went entered into an inpatient rehab facility. You credit the care you received there as a turning point.
▶ 1:52:03Uh do you have do you have a sense of approximately how much money your family spent on your addiction treatment? Uh well, I spent the money on my addiction treatment and at that time the rehab was uh probably like $800 a day. I think today they're much higher than that. Many of them. Yeah, I think that's right.
▶ 1:52:29Uh my understanding is that the the private rehab facility like the one that you uh went to would cost in today's dollar for that same treatment $286,000 out of pocket just for addiction treatment that I think we can all agree Republican and Democrat is absolutely necessary to make sure that we're keeping our communities safe. I bring this up because there are Congressman there are many really gold star rehabs that do it for a tiny fraction like 20 to $40,000 a month. There you go.
▶ 1:52:59Um, I bring this up because in my community, the average salary is $40,000. So, most folks in my community can't even afford 20 or $40,000 per month. And most of the folks in our area rely on public clinics that are mostly financed through Medicaid. About half of my district is on Medicaid. And the recent budget that is being discussed in the House right now would leave 50,000 people in my community without health insurance.
▶ 1:53:27So, Secretary Kennedy, my question for you is why do you think that a community like mine doesn't deserve access to that same basic health care provided by Medicaid that you benefited from? I do believe they do believe and that's that is the design of the Medicaid So, do you disagree with the cuts that are being proposed for Medicaid right now?
▶ 1:53:50No, the cuts to, you know, this is a I don't know if you understand this or whether you're just mouthing, you know, the Democratic talking points. The cuts to Medicaid are for fraud, waste, and abuse. And I'll tell you what that means. It means that the because of Doge, we were able to determine and it's about 8 million people who would be affected. Because of Doge, we were able to determine that there are a million people who are claiming Medicaid from multiple states.
▶ 1:54:20That's illegal. It's a theft. You're not allowed to do that. There are another million people who are collecting both under Obamacare. And Secretary, this has nothing to do with the budget that These are the only cuts that are being made. These are the only cuts that are being made to Medicaid. That's not true. To the Yes, it is. Another million illegal aliens. We announced a law yesterday. yesterday, a rule yesterday, we're not going to pay illegal aliens anymore. And guess what Gavin Newsome did this morning?
▶ 1:54:49He said, "We're going to take all the illegal aliens off the California Medicaid roles because the feds aren't paying for them anymore." So, the compassion and secretary, let me let me focus you on the actual numbers of the budget that's being proposed. Secretary, I regain my time. I think uh what you are saying is absolutely inaccurate in terms of the 13 million Americans that will lose access to healthcare. Let me tell you the folks in my district are not actually getting Medicaid at another state. They can't travel to get another state.
▶ 1:55:17The clinics that are providing that life-saving care are the last resort for folks. Let me tell you the last category. Last category is is adults who are who are able-bodied who refuse to look for a job to volunteer to get a job or to show or they show that they are insert or to take a part time. I agree with Tom. That is absolutely not true.
▶ 1:55:43The vast majority of folks in a community like mine who are on Medicaid are working. They want to work. People want to be able to make sure that they they're in no danger of losing their Medicaid. That's just not true. We've seen in time after time, including in Arkansas and Florida and other states, that when you put more red tape, Yes. But we've seen this chapter before. When you put more red tape in in in front of people actually getting that life-saving care, uh you're going to prevent people from accessing health insurance.
▶ 1:56:13Medicaid is for poor children. It's for women, for mothers, and it's for the disabled. It is. And 13 million of those people are going to lose health insurance if this budget becomes law. They're already losing their health insurance because of all the able-bodied people who are not working for looking for jobs on Medicare. Secretary, I'll just close by saying this. I hope that you remember the grace that was given to you during your darkest days.
▶ 1:56:37And I recommend that you come to a district like mine and stare at a single mom who has young kids who's at risk of losing her health insurance because more red tape from Stockton, California. Come on out. We'd love to have you. And I hope that you can actually explain why this program is going to make her life healthier and help with the actual outcomes that we're talking about because uh I think that's a hard case to Dr. Paris.
▶ 1:57:08Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. You're absolutely right. No pregnant woman or single mom who qualifies under traditional Medicare Medicaid is going to lose anything. This talking point is ridiculous. The million people who are committing absolute illegal fraud by by on being on Medicaid roles in two separate states is a fraud and the insurance companies make a ton of money from it. You're absolutely right. We have a $2 trillion deficit. It's not sustainable. Period.
▶ 1:57:38There are a lot of things I'd love to do. Believe me, you you appreciate it. $2 trillion deficit is not sustainable. Uh you know, you're right. Uh you know, a lot of the what you're doing is going back to precoid levels. You know, as a famous person on the other side of the aisle once said, you never want a serious crisis to go to waste, and they didn't let CO go to waste. We increased federal spending by 40% since uh after CO is over. Let's go back to the old one. We have to look at every program. Let me talk to you.
▶ 1:58:07We talked uh when when we spoke a couple days ago about nutrition. Look, I'm a thousand% behind you on nutrition. First, we have to agree that there's a problem. First thing is we can't get agreement that this country is sicker, not healthier. When I propose that to the uh to the last director of NIH, there are arguments from the other side that that's not true. It's absolutely true.
▶ 1:58:30By every measure you can the let's take life expectancy the simplest measure simplest easy to understand measure you know life expectancy is going down let's take then let's look at the chronic disease which you're absolutely right whether you look at uh obesity overweight hypertension cardiovascular disease they're all gotten worse not better and almost all can be linked to nutrition so I'm glad that you and uh the secretary of agriculture going to support finally taking the supplemental nutrition assistance program and
▶ 1:59:00uh put some meaning in the word nutrition. Let me uh talk a little about about the NIH because I think one of the most telling things about the NIH which some people say should be called the National Institute of Disease, not the National Institute of Health because we study disease but we're not keeping people healthier. Um when I wanted to hold a hearing my other with my other hat as the uh U as the A um subcommittee chair, we called over to NIH to get an expert on nutrition.
▶ 1:59:30This should be pretty easy, right? You probably got a million of them, right? No, they couldn't send someone over. Now, if I had asked for an oncologist, they could have sent dozens. They would have sent the director of the division. They would have sent the director of the NIH over. And yet it's pretty clear and you understand this nutrition is linked to cancer too. Might need fewer oncologists if we had some better nutrition. And you know, God bless you in what you're trying to do with that.
▶ 1:59:56You know that that that study out of WashU in in December that actually shows the link with high intake of fructose to the carcinogen the lipid and I'm going to the lysophospatidal cholines that are metabolized by humans from fructose that are that increase tumor growth. I mean these are the kind of things we should be studying linking it back to nutrition.
▶ 2:00:18So, uh, I will just ask you what what are your when you envision what we're going to do on nutrition writ large to try to make us a healthier country, what do you what do you think we have to look at? What are the first things we have to look at? I mean, you know what I and that's a really good question, Congressman. What we need to be doing is NIH has done really good and I talked to to Congresswoman Deloro last night.
▶ 2:00:45She said, "Look, NIH has done all this great science so that we can cure cancers faster." And and and so my question is, is it a great thing that you can now cure or treat colctal cancer so only 50% 100% of people die? Or should somebody be thinking about why are we getting colorectal cancer in children, which has never in history of humanity happened before? It's now an epidemic.
▶ 2:01:14There was nobody at NIH to answer those questions. Nobody. No research was done on it. The ideology of all these chronic diseases were just buried because they didn't want to offend the large industries who are putting these poisons in our food and putting them in our pharmaceutical products. or some of these things for some of these ingredients. We just need to let the public know and probably do labeling so that people can make their own choice.
▶ 2:01:43If you want to eat a Twinkie, if you want to drink a Coca-Cola, you should be able to do that. We're a free country. you ought to know that it may increase your cancer le risk and that it may increase your risk for diabetes and that and so we're going to study each of these ingredients starting with the most common ones the the greatest you know the suspected culprits and we're going to tell the ones that are so bad they should be taken away we're going to work with industry to get rid of them great idea and the other ones we're just going
▶ 2:02:13to tell people so they can make it inforge that you know if we add money back into the NIH budget we should insisted it be nutrition spending. The only last thing I'll say just very briefly, Mr. Chairman, is that again wearing my other hat from the A side is that uh our farmers are worried that if we uh look at pesticides as we should that we just be careful that we work together to make sure that we don't our agriculture economy and I'd look forward to working with you on that. I yield back.
▶ 2:02:41I mean, we cannot we cannot make America healthy again without the partnership of the American farmers. We cannot be putting them out of business. and they're already operating on razor thin margins. Mr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here, Mr. Secretary. I was a 20-year Navy veteran and uh I'm both a warrior and a father, so I'm also a protector.
▶ 2:03:01Four years ago, I went down to the border of Texas when the mass wave of humanity came in from uh South and Central America and uh went down with the Texas uh Department of Public Safety and stood right on the edge of the water at the river there and I watched a coyote bring a family, a so-called family across the water. I was powerless to do anything.
▶ 2:03:25Although uh you know for my own self-p protection I was armed and certainly wanted to take action on this man that was trafficking in human beings. This family came across at least I thought it was a family man and wife and and two children. One of the kids didn't get out of the boat and uh the uh the border patrol or the Texas DPS trooper says you forgot one. Now why was this happening?
▶ 2:03:51It was because they were allowing families to come in undocumented if they brought someone in under the age of eight. I'm not going to relitigate the last four years. It's irrelevant at this point. All we've got now is 300 children. 300,000 children that we know of, probably double that because you can't count once that you don't encounter missing in the United States America.
▶ 2:04:17and evil exists in the world and it ex exists in the realm of human trafficking and child uh sex trade and they're in this country and so that was the the department of HHS that was their responsibility to make sure that the sponsors were vetted. They didn't do so. We've addressed what you're doing now. What is out there?
▶ 2:04:42What capabilities do you have in coordination with other agencies to try to find these We don't actually have at HHS enforcement capability. What we're doing is what we're doing is unprecedented, which is we're doing data sharing and we have a war room where we are doing everything we can to locate these children and then we uh when we get close to locating them, we turn
▶ 2:05:12that information over to ICE and to DHS and they have the capacity, the enforcement capacity to actually find it. We we work together with them and we've got an extraordinary team in our war room in my building at HHS that is working 10-hour days to track down every single one of these kids and try to bring them back. You know, a lot of them it's going to be very very difficult. It sure is. I'm I'm glad you're doing that because, you know, you can't just forget them.
▶ 2:05:41We've got a lot of big issues facing child health, but the idea that some of these kids just got handed over to people that we don't know and have they disappeared. And I I remember being down on the border, these I don't know what these folks did with this little girl. I have an idea, but I know we were finding them dead in ditches. And so I I'm I'm glad that HHS is working with other agencies to do that. witness as it's police week.
▶ 2:06:04I guarantee everybody on this mall uh this week is willing to help out in any way they can to find these kids. And I just like to follow up with I I've watched and you talked about uh um lunches and how kids aren't being fed very well and processed foods. And I remember growing up in Perryton, Texas, and my favorite people in school because I hated school was the lunch ladies. And they made the best food ever. And it was home-cooked meals.
▶ 2:06:31And I knew it was healthy because they weren't sit, you know, giving us um sugary stuff. They were giving us home-cooked meals. And I went to lunch with my son a couple years ago and everything they had was highly processed, frozen, and then heated up. And it was inedible. And so I would love to see the federal government get out of making sure that everybody eats the same thing because we talked about the tribes, too. Tribes can't eat the same thing everybody else's does.
▶ 2:06:56So, I want to go back to local control on figuring out what is best for the local kids in those schools and then they cook those meals and get the federal government out of determining what's good and what's edible and what's not. So, yeah, I appreciate you. I 100% on board. I mean, we have a research capacity at FDA to give categories of food and, you know, very simple, basic. Don't eat anything that comes in a package. you know, don't eat anything that's, you know, with with chemicals on it that you can't read.
▶ 2:07:26Don't we eat anything with more than three ingredients in it and and sending that out and letting people solve the issue of what exactly makes sense in their locality. Yes, sir. Thank you for your time. I yield back, Miss Lilllo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so much, Secretary Kennedy, for being uh here with us today. And I'm so grateful for your efforts to make sure our federal health system is laser focused on creating a healthier, more prosperous America.
▶ 2:07:55And my home state of Louisiana has embraced the MAB movement, uh, including a lot of concerned mamas out there. I'm one of them. And I'm so eager to hear from you on how we can best support your mission moving forward. And I'd love to talk about how we can work together uh to improve women's health research. As a woman, a mother, a member of Congress, I am deeply concerned about the long-standing gaps in research and care that affects women's health.
▶ 2:08:22I hear from women daily about how a simple blood test or routine screening could have prevented debilitating cancers, still births, preventable diseases, and the high price tag that comes with the treatments for these diseases. In just my state this year, we can expect close to 30,000 new incidences of cancer, including 4,230 new incidences of breast cancer and 210 new incidences of cervical cancer. Louisiana's fifth congressional district already sits higher than the national average for breast cancer deaths.
▶ 2:08:50Yet, women are still under reppresented in clinical trials. The unique biological health factors that impact women's health are too often an afterthought rather than a priority. We have made some progress with programs such as the CDC's National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, which has provided access to life-saving prevention and early detection services for women in underserved areas, and the pregnant women and lactating women advisory committee to address this gap in clinical research, but I know more work can be
▶ 2:09:20done. Secretary Kennedy, what specific actions will the department be taking to build on these existing programs and ensure that research funding, policy direction, and implementation reflect the full scope of women's health needs?
▶ 2:09:33Yeah, I I want to thank you uh Congresswoman and also um take note of the fact that there was a you know one of the canards that has been widely reported in the you know by in the mainstream Democratic party press is that we terminated a um a 30-year uh woman's health study at NIH which was reported initially in the New York Times. the report was inaccurate um really badly inaccurate.
▶ 2:10:03We very strongly support that. Jay Bodachara who is the director of NIH actually has done a lot of his research on that database and we are going to continue that. We have 42 maternal health programs throughout the agencies.
▶ 2:10:19We're going to continue that commitment and that's a uh um that's a multi-billion dollar commitment and we're going to continue it that and I'd love to work with you directly um to figure out you know what we can do more to make sure that uh that we have great detection that we have great diagnosis early detection and prevention. Thank you. I look forward to working with you on that.
▶ 2:10:45I also represent a largely rural district that covers 21 parishes in Louisiana, many of which are considered medical deserts. I hear from my constituents daily about the lack of access to regular and specialized care. My district is part of the Delta region along the Mississippi River and within the Delta, there are a number of types of cancers and chronic chronic illnesses on the rise, and there seems to be little success in slowing the morbidity rates down.
▶ 2:11:08The fifth district also ranks worse than the national average in cardiovascular disease deaths, kidney disease and diabetes deaths. This is only one part of the long history of the Delta region having poor health outcomes than the rest of the nation. Secretary Kennedy, what initiatives are the agency planning to implement to improve health outcomes in the Delta region? And how can Congress partner with you to ensure that these plans come to fruition for our rural healthcare deserts?
▶ 2:11:34Uh, Congressman, this is a priority for me during this administration, and I made that commitment to many of the senators who voted for my confirmation. It was probably the most commonly repeated concern about uh rural health and the decline in opportunities in rural health.
▶ 2:11:52Um we have programs at HERSA um to increase personnel and frontline responders and frontline uh treatment uh personnel in those district which is a chronic there are chronic shortages of doctors nurses who want to move to those areas.
▶ 2:12:12Um we are going to make sure to continue to report rur to support rural hospitals and healthc care We are going to dramatically revolutionize the availability of teleaalth and AI so that people uh can avoid emergency rooms by getting treated at home.
▶ 2:12:33I looked at a yesterday that can um that can accurately diagnose strep throat by telephone using a your telephone camera would take one picture of the inside of your throat. And the the accuracy of that test is greater than a strep swab. And the these are opportunities. So you can prevent somebody from having to go to the emergency room and you could get them a prescription onsite.
▶ 2:13:04There are so many opportunities that are so exciting. Yes. And we have just the right team in place to implement them and deploy them across the country. Dr. Oz and we have uh Chris Clum who is you know come came out of the tech industry who is integrating AI into all of our systems there. We're really going to revolutionize this agency. That's wonderful news. My time's expired. Thank you so much. Thank you, Miss Lllo.
▶ 2:13:30And I think we've we've covered all the the uh every member has got a chance to ask question. Uh but before we do adjourn, I would like to recognize the uh ranking member, Mr. Laur, for any closing comments. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And first, I would like to on Congresswoman Dean's behalf enter an article into the uh into the record. Thank you, member. Uh I wanted to enter an article into the record uh on the topic of Medicaid and work.
▶ 2:13:58Uh it is by the Kaiser Family Foundation. It is dated February the 4th. I believe you have it at the desk. Understanding the intersection of Medicaid and work. Uh unlike the chestnut, the bigoted chestnut that we see very often written that Medicaid recipients are not working. The data shows the vast majority of able-bodied people are working. Without objection, it'll be included. Thank you, Mr. L. Thank you very much.
▶ 2:14:24I sorry, Miss Lllo uh left, but I think it's it's important to note that in the 2026 budget uh and under CDC, the breast cancer the breast and cervical cancer program has been eliminated. I think that's important to understand uh for for women's health. Um, also, Secretary Kender, you you're committed uh to to following the law and awarding congressionally appropriated funds in 2025.
▶ 2:14:50And please understand that we are in 2025 and we are under the uh continuing resolution which is the 2024 budget. So quite frankly, it should be an easy transfer to 2024 to 20 25. But that that is what is operative. That is the law of the land. Not a suggestion, not a directive, a law of the land. But the evidence suggests that you are cutting billions of dollars in funding right now.
▶ 2:15:19The evidence shows that you are withholding at least $2.7 billion in lifesaving NIH research and that is only midway through 2025. And based on the evidence, I believe uh and the OM director has indicated that you are going to illegally impound billions of dollars of congressionally appropriated funding for NIH research in 2025.
▶ 2:15:48To make matters worse, you are proposing to cut NIH funding by 20 billion dollar in 2026. You do not have the authority to do what you are doing. Congressman Hoyer pointed out that very clearly and explicitly. You don't have the authority. This administration does not have this authority. You're reorganizing of the NIH. You don't have the authority.
▶ 2:16:18That is in the jurisdiction of the United States Congress. You want to eliminate five agencies. You want to create a new agency. Once again, I don't mean to be repetitive, but I do mean to be repetitive. You do not have the authority to do any of that. Let me a couple of other areas I think are important. HHS makes medical decisions every day. You're making medical decisions every day. You're the secretary of HHS.
▶ 2:16:46You have tremendous power over health policy. Really horrified that you will not encourage families to vaccinate their children. Measles, chickenpox, polio. Vaccines are one of the foundations of public health. Vaccines, yes, save lives. And the fact that the Secretary of Health and Human Services refuses to encourage children to be vaccinated is a tragedy. And we have already had two children in the United States who've died needlessly from from measles.
▶ 2:17:16Let me also um uh move forward. You talked about the NIH uh and the science of the NIH. And just very very quickly high-profile successes from NIH research, human genome project, imunotherapy, crisper gene editing, cickle cell cure, vaccines for HPV hepatitis, MRA and vaccines including the life-saving co vaccines, artificial heart valves, BLP-1 medications for diabetes and weight management.
▶ 2:17:43It is a a one can look at and see what works or doesn't work. But you can't sit here and tell us that NIH has been a failure and that the science and the people who have worked at the NIH have not made unbelievable unbelievable discoveries uh uh to cure. I have a question which had to do with Nyash. Um and you not have to answer this question, but I don't understand why Republicans get to call you to spare offices like Nyosh. Who do Democrats have to call?
▶ 2:18:11Is there a special phone number if I want to save tobacco prevention, lead poisoning? 9 million children were lead poisoned in Flint, 9 million kids. Okay, so tobacco prevention, lead poisoning, oral health, who do we have to call to be able to get those things reinstated? And finally, let me just say this to you because there's been a discussion here.
▶ 2:18:35Well, on on nutrition, I would just say to you that look, I I'm very very big on nutrition, food safety. I've spent, you know, the last 20 or 25 years dealing with this issue. So, I'm supportive of some of the areas that that you have have have talked about. Um, but uh and by the way, the office of research at the NIH, they can only spend $1 million on research.
▶ 2:18:58This committee can provide them with a hell of a lot more money if we want them to do uh uh the more on more on research. But what and a side issue on on Medicaid with regard to young children, it is children, disabled, low-wage workers, and seniors who are the beneficiaries of Medicaid. And that would appear to be really on the on the chopping block. Mr. Chairman, I have just one more comment to make um to you.
▶ 2:19:27um the testimony with regard to um unaccompanied children spend a lot of time on that issue a lot of time because by law as you know we have to accept unaccompanied kids that's HHS responsibility you're right there isn't enforcement but we have that responsibility to keep them safe put them in the best set of circumstances uh I was chair of this committee during the first Trump administration
▶ 2:19:59ation still outraged. He was horrified at the time to learn that Steven Miller was directing border agents to separate children from their parents as a deterrent as a deterrent to coming to the United States. Some of these children were taken away from their parents. They were less than five years old.
▶ 2:20:24Now there was about 4600 kids separated from their families today. That was in 2017 2018. I had a conversation with Secretary Azar at the time was in my home in my office with my grandson on my lap and I said to him, "Do you have a list of the families and a list of the children so that they can be reinstated?" He assured me that they did. Mr.
▶ 2:20:53Secretary, it's 2025. 1,300 of those children are unaccounted for. Do we want to look for missing kids to get them to their parents? Let's start there. That was a tragedy of great proportions inflicted by the United States of America. You have an unbelievable job. You have a it when we talk about HHS, it really is a cornerstone of what this country is all about and what we can do.
▶ 2:21:24We don't deal here with airplanes, with roads or bridges or helicopters. That's not what we do. What our job and your job is to save lives. And I would hope that you would take another look at what is being proposed and I would say fight back as I would ask my colleagues to fight back and say we can't do this. We can't eliminate some of these programs.
▶ 2:21:49The havoc that we are going to cause in dealing with research and cutting back on research is going to put lives at risk. You have an incredibly important job. Thank you, Mr. I think you can make the difference. Please do. Thank you. Um well, thank you, Mr. secretary for being here today. And uh let me say u I I do think you bring fresh eyes. I think you bring a new perspective uh on public health uh and the overall state of our health care system in America.
▶ 2:22:18And uh I appreciate what you're doing to look at what is working and what is not working. And I think that's what's very much needed in this and not take everything as a status quo. And uh so I think we've had a very good hearing, had a very spirited hearing today, but uh I think we've covered a lot of topics and u very happy that every all the members got a chance to uh ask questions. We would like I'm sure we could go on for a couple more hours.
▶ 2:22:43Um and we'd I'd love to do a second round, but I know that you have another hearing I think you're scheduled this afternoon for and uh so uh so you can take a break for a minute, maybe get some lunch uh a healthy lunch. Uh and uh Mr. Chairman for a question. U he has got another hearing to go to. So I'm going go and with that with that u I uh stand adjourned. Thank you. Well done.