[Pages S953-S955]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  NOMINATION OF ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.

  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, today, we consider the nomination of RFK, 
Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
  In a time when science has given us the tools to extend life, to 
eradicate disease, to protect the most vulnerable among us, this body 
is being asked to confirm a man who has dedicated the better part of 
his career to attacking science.
  But the debate over RFK, Jr., and his anti-science agenda does not 
take place in isolation. It is part of a broader and far more reaching 
and destructive agenda. It is part of an effort to dismantle public 
services, to strip away all the country's resources, to defund the 
Department of Health and Human Services, to take away from those who 
have little and hand it to those who have everything.
  So this is not just about RFK, Jr.; it is about every senior who 
relies on Medicare, every low-income family whose children get 
healthcare through Medicaid, every person who depends on

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the government not as a luxury but as a necessity.
  I want to take us back for a moment to talk about why we even have a 
Department of Health and Human Services in the first place. Because 
when a government works the way it is supposed to, when public health 
and security is taken seriously, HHS exists to ensure that no American 
has to choose between their health and bankruptcy. It exists because we 
decided as a nation that we would not let people lose everything just 
because they get sick, that we would not let children die from 
preventable diseases, that we would set basic rules on food and drug 
safety to protect families, that we would invest in science not as an 
indulgence but as a way to improve the life and the quality of life for 
all Americans.
  And, tonight, we are being asked to hand over that responsibility to 
a man who has spent his career undermining scientific achievement, to a 
man who has told Americans a thousand different times in a thousand 
different ways not to trust the very science that has saved millions of 
lives.
  So who exactly is RFK, Jr., and what does he believe? Let's talk 
about what this nominee has actually said. In 2005, he wrote an 
article, one so riddled with falsehoods that even the publisher, 
Rolling Stone, retracted it--this article accusing the government of 
covering up a supposed link between vaccines and autism, an article 
that said vaccines ``poison[ed] an entire generation of American 
children.'' That claim has been debunked more times than any of us can 
count.
  The New England Journal of Medicine, the CDC, the WHO, the American 
Academy of Pediatrics--every credible institution that studies this 
issue has confirmed what the science has long established: Vaccines do 
not cause autism.
  But Mr. Kennedy did not retract the claim. He did not acknowledge the 
overwhelming scientific consensus. No. No. He doubled down. He founded 
the Children's Health Defense, an organization that masquerades as a 
public health group while spreading disinformation that has fueled 
vaccine hesitancy across this country and beyond.
  His group has falsely linked vaccines to neurological disorders, to 
chronic illnesses, to developmental delays. They have suggested, 
without a shred of evidence, that childhood immunization schedules are 
unsafe. They have flooded social media with scare tactics, with 
conspiracy theories, with outright lies that have led parents to refuse 
vaccines for their children.
  They even sold children's onesies with catch phrases like ``No Vax, 
No Problem'' and ``Unvaxxed, Unafraid.''
  And because words have power, because a lie repeated enough can 
masquerade as truth, the damage has been staggering.
  The 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa: Why did that happen? Because 
vaccination rates plummeted down to just 31 percent after anti-vaccine 
activists spread fear and misinformation. Robert F. Kennedy was part of 
that.
  His organization amplified the very lies that led Samoan parents to 
hesitate, to delay, to forgo the measles vaccine--reckless, 
irresponsible, and deadly.
  Mr. President, 83 lives were lost when measles tore throughout the 
region. Most of those killed were children. There were parents who 
trusted, as all parents do, that the world would be safe for their sons 
and daughters, and what did they find? They found that trust abused by 
people peddling misinformation, by reckless speculation dressed up as 
concern, by the very ideas Mr. Kennedy has trafficked in for years.
  Let's not pretend that this is some harmless contrarian at play here, 
that this is some cocktail party eccentric, or that this is some kind 
of lively academic debate. When a man tells millions of people not to 
vaccinate their children and they listen, children die.
  It did not stop there. In 2021, in the middle of a once-in-a-century 
pandemic, as COVID-19 tore through communities and filled emergency 
rooms to capacity, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., used his platform not to 
encourage vaccination, not to protect the public, but to do quite the 
opposite. He promoted the lie that mRNA vaccines alter human DNA. 
False--they do not. He suggested, without evidence, that the COVID 
vaccine was more dangerous than the virus itself--false. He compared 
vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany, invoking Anne Frank--a grotesque and 
offensive distortion of history.
  As recent as 2023, RFK was on podcasts arguing that ``there's no 
vaccine that is safe and effective.''
  This is the man we are considering for Secretary of Health and Human 
Services--a man who, when presented with lifesaving science, does not 
champion it, he undermines it; a man who, when given the choice between 
protecting public health and indulging conspiracy theories, chooses 
conspiracy every single time.
  It is worth asking ourselves why Donald Trump would support a nominee 
so unqualified for this position, whose views are so contrary to 
science. Yes, I get it, RFK dropped out of the Presidential race and 
endorsed Donald Trump, but is there more to it than that? I think the 
answer is yes.
  To understand why Donald Trump would support a nominee so 
unqualified, it is worth asking ourselves why scientists like Anthony 
Fauci, who have devoted their long careers to deploying science in the 
service of better health, have been made a villain by Donald Trump. 
Because the answer lies in the mirror image of the two. Why promote 
RFK, Jr., the vaccine charlatan, and at the same time vilify Anthony 
Fauci, the vaccine champion?
  I will say this: Of all the attacks on our institutions during the 
first 4 years of Donald Trump, nothing was more corrosive to our 
democracy than his relentless assault on the truth because nothing is 
more useful to a demagogue than to destroy the very idea of truth. If 
nothing is to be believed, then nothing is to be believed. If there is 
not some shared experience to draw upon, then what is left to decide 
who should govern but political tribe or violence and one-man rule?
  This is why the demagogue always attacks a free press and calls it 
fake. He must cause the public not to believe its lying eyes. A vicious 
mob attacks the Capitol; the would-be despot calls them tourists. The 
mob attacks police and beats them; the would-be despot calls them 
political prisoners. He fires inspectors general whose job it is to 
root out corruption and says it is to fight corruption. He wants to 
dismantle the Agency that protects consumers; he says that it is to 
protect consumers. He wants to plunder the Treasury to make his rich 
friends richer and shower them with tax cuts, and he says he is saving 
the Treasury by emptying it.
  But why the attack on science? What has science to do with a despot's 
need to attack the truth? Well, what is the scientific inquiry but a 
search for fact and truth? And what is the scientist but the symbol of 
a search for fact and truth? Want to attack the truth? You must attack 
the truth tellers. You must attack science itself. Out with the Faucis 
and in with the charlatans.
  But the truth cannot be made to disappear so easily. I remember who 
saved our country during its most deadly pandemic in 100 years, and it 
wasn't the charlatans. It was the scientists and the healthcare workers 
and the essential workers.
  We saw true heroes during that pandemic. I remember the images clear 
as day--first responders without the necessary PPE rushing into homes 
where infected individuals were afraid and alone; nurses and EMTs 
working back-to-back shifts and watching their friends, neighbors, and 
communities torn apart inside and out by this horrible disease.
  We got out of that pandemic in significant part because of the 
vaccine and the brave healthcare providers who administered it and 
other lifesaving care, not despite it.
  While Mr. Kennedy postures as a skeptic, while he frames himself as a 
crusader against corruption, his organization did nothing to help us 
through that deadly pandemic, and, in fact, he has profited handsomely 
from the fear that organization sows.
  In 2020 alone, Children's Health Defense saw its revenue double, 
raking in millions as the pandemic worsened. Mr. Kennedy built himself 
a lucrative career not by exposing anti-science falsehoods but by 
spreading them, by cultivating them, and profiting from them. This is 
opportunism of the most grotesque kind. This is grift masquerading as 
principle. And now, we are being

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asked to entrust the health of 330 million Americans to this man?
  I have to ask because it demands to be asked: What exactly is the 
vision here? What kind of Health and Human Services Secretary does the 
Trump administration believe they are appointing?
  I think they know, and I think they know they have their man in RFK, 
Jr., because if your goal is to dismantle public health, if your goal 
is to dismantle the truth, if you want a Secretary who will tell people 
to ignore doctors and trust whatever random YouTube video they last 
saw, then, yes, this is your guy. If you want a Secretary who won't say 
no even if the falsehoods cost lives, like advocating bleach or horse 
dewormer to cure COVID, this is your guy.
  If you want a Secretary who has no will, desire, or guts to stand up 
to Elon Musk or Donald Trump, who craves nothing more than the 
attention that a high office will bring, then this--this is most 
definitely your guy.
  If your goal is to make sure that Medicaid--the single largest source 
of health insurance in this country--becomes nothing more than a 
cautionary tale at the behest of RFK, Jr., and Dr. Oz; if you want 
millions of people to lose coverage; if you want seniors to see their 
Medicare protections gutted, then by all means, let's give Mr. Kennedy 
the job.
  While they are gutting healthcare, while they are stripping away 
protections, while they are making measles great again, they want to 
hand out tax cuts to billionaires like party favors. Trillions of 
dollars taken out of our healthcare system and handed over to the 
wealthiest among us. Trillions of dollars to people who already have 
more than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. But that child in 
Medicare or Medicaid who needs insulin, that senior on Medicare who has 
a heart condition--no, we are told there is just not enough in the 
budget for them.

  Well, I reject the cynical notion that government exists only to 
serve the powerful. I reject the idea that expertise is optional, that 
science is negotiable, and that the well-being of the American people 
is just another chip to be bargained away. I reject it, and I know I am 
not the only one.
  I do not believe in a government that exists only to protect the 
powerful, I do not believe that we are at our best when we are most 
indifferent, and I do not believe that the American experiment was 
meant to end with a nation that surrenders its own future to cynics and 
con men.
  So let me tell you what I do believe. I believe in the doctor pulling 
a double shift in the community hospital, exhausted but unwavering, 
because she took an oath to heal. I believe in the mother who walks her 
child into a free clinic and breathes easier knowing that today, at 
least, her son's asthma will be treated and he will breathe easier. I 
believe in the scientist who spends a lifetime working in obscurity so 
that one day no child has to suffer such a terrible and specific 
disease again. I believe in a government that does not mock these 
people, that does not sabotage them, that does not sell them out for 
the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. And I believe we need 
the best and brightest to shepherd our healthcare system, our 
resources, to maximize every dollar in search of every cure.
  RFK is not the best or the brightest. He will not bring back Camelot 
or make America healthy again, but his ignorance of science just might 
make people sick again, might deprive them of a treatment they need 
again, might cause hospitals to close again, might discourage young 
people from entering the sciences again. He just might.
  We must not confirm a man who so willingly endeavors to be the enemy 
of the truth when it comes to our health. We need to vote like our 
lives depend on it because, for a great many Americans, it will.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.

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