Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. started an angry rant during a hearing Tuesday, prompting a Republican senator to urge him to “hold back.”
Kennedy’s outburst came after Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) slammed drastic staffing and funding cuts at his department, and asked whose decision it was to withhold certain childcare and development funds.
Kennedy began by criticizing former President Joe Biden’s administration, and when Murray tried to get him back on track, he snapped back: “You know what, you’ve made an accusation and I’m going to answer it.”
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Kennedy then launched into into a heated personal tirade against Murray, who tried to rein him in to no avail.
“I want to point out something senator, you’ve presided here, I think, for 32 years. You’ve presided over the destruction of the health of the American people,” he said as he raised his voice.
“Seriously?” Murray interjected repeatedly as Kennedy barged on. “Our people are now the sickest people in the world because you have not done your job!” he exclaimed.
“Mr. Secretary, seriously,” Murray said. But Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist and frequent peddler of conspiracy theories, wasn’t done.
“What have you done about it? What have you done about the epidemic of chronic disease?” he shouted, repeating, “What have you done about the epidemic of chronic disease?”
That’s when Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), the chair of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee where Kennedy was testifying, decided to step in.
“Mr. Secretary I would ask you to hold back and let the senator ask the questions,” Capito told Kennedy.
The answer to Murray’s initial question about who had ordered the funding cuts turned out to be simple.
“That was made by my department,” Kennedy conceded.
It wasn’t just Democratic senators who voiced concern about rollbacks that the HHS has made as part of President Donald Trump’s crusade to slash the size of the federal government.
Capito herself addressed recent cuts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which oversees workplace safety, saying: “I support the President’s vision to right-size our government, but as you and I have discussed, I don’t think eliminating NIOSH programs will accomplish that goal.”
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said that cutting mining research programs hosted by NIOSH, “undermines our ability to meet national security goals tied to mineral independence and supply chain resilience.”
