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Floor Speech

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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I want to say thanks to the Senator from Minnesota for her leadership on this point. I know that great research institutions in Minnesota that count on her support are out there fighting, thanks to Donald Trump, as they are in Massachusetts--and people all around this country who rely on those research institutions, who are looking for those cures, for those better treatments, for those opportunities in their lives that, right now, Donald Trump and his co- President Elon Musk seem to want to cut off.

So we will stay in this fight. We will indeed.

I am here today because Americans didn't vote to bring back measles. Americans didn't vote to bring back polio. Americans didn't vote to bring back dangerous diseases that we thought we had wiped out decades ago. Americans didn't vote to get rid of critical vaccines that we know--based on science--we know save lives.

But that is what Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s vision would mean for Americans. That is the vision that Donald Trump will empower him to carry out.

Kennedy not only worked to undercut vaccines at home and abroad; he has made a lot of money doing it. In fact, Kennedy has made millions off of peddling harmful conspiracy theories that hurt real people. He opposed the lifesaving COVID vaccine just 6 months into the pandemic, and he set himself up so that he and his family could make millions more from putting Americans' health at risk.

One thing is very clear: We cannot trust Robert Kennedy to make healthcare decisions that will affect every person in this country.

Right now, millions of Americans are sitting down for dinner with their kids, and I hope we just think for a minute about what RFK, Jr.'s plans would mean for them.

Will their teeth decay because Kennedy took fluoride out of the water based on some conspiracy theory? Will they have to worry about getting measles at school because Kennedy is spreading anti-vax conspiracies on government letterhead? Will parents have to risk their kids getting polio and maybe dying by sending them to daycare because Kennedy used his HHS rules to open the door to a flood of bogus lawsuits that force manufacturers to pull the vaccines?

Look, here is the thing: Robert Kennedy has spent years on an anti- vaccine crusade, spreading baseless conspiracy theories under the guise of protecting children. So we don't need to guess the level of harm he will cause. His past already tells us everything we need to know.

In July 2018, two children died immediately after receiving a measles vaccine that nurses had incorrectly mixed with a muscle relaxant. Within weeks, the Samoan Health Ministry publicly confirmed the nursing error and charged the nurses with manslaughter.

Nevertheless, leading anti-vaccine groups--including Kennedy's own organization, Children's Health Defense--exploited public fears to question the reports and spread baseless claims.

On August 5, 2018, Kennedy's organization, Children's Health Defense, posted on Facebook--and I will quote the post:

Were these once-healthy children the only two to receive MMR that day? If not, why were they the only ones to die? Research needs to determine susceptibility so that no child is ever injured.

Del Bigtree, Kennedy's partner and former campaign manager, also released a video linking the tragedy to false claims about measles and telling his followers to ``share it with everyone you know. This is how we are changing the world.''

Now, amidst public distrust and a paused vaccine program in Samoa, the vaccination rates plummeted. About 10 months later, once the Samoan Government had finally stood up against the disinformation and resumed the vaccine program, Kennedy visited the island to meet with the Prime Minister.

Later, recognizing the blowback that comes with how much went wrong when a conspiracy theory cost people their lives, Kennedy has since denied that his visit had anything to do with vaccines and said that anything suggesting otherwise was ``an industry propaganda trope''--in other words, totally false--``an industry propaganda trope.'' Kennedy lied.

A blog post that Kennedy himself wrote in 2021 admits that he went to Samoa to meet with the Prime Minister, who wanted to discuss the possibility of ``measur[ing] health outcomes following the `natural experiment' created by the nation's respite from vaccines.''

Think about what that means. Another way to say it is that Kennedy was interested in taking advantage of how the vaccination rate had plummeted--caused by misinformation--so that they could conduct uncontrolled trials on whether unvaccinated kids were healthier than vaccinated kids, a conspiracy theory that he had widely spread.

You see, at the time, one of his traveling partners was working on a similar study with two anti-vaccine activists, which was ultimately retracted, following an investigation that ``raised several methodological issues and confirmed that the conclusions were not supported by strong scientific data.''

Now there is no surprise here. The Prime Minister of Samoa declined Kennedy's outrageous proposal. He didn't want his country to be Kennedy's guinea pig. He didn't want unvaccinated children to be studied to see what happened to them when measles or other diseases broke out.

But that didn't stop Kennedy from spreading his message. On this trip to Samoa, he met with various anti-vaccine influencers, one of whom said the meeting was ``profoundly monumental for the movement.''

A few months after Kennedy left, in October 2019, the vaccination rate in Samoa hit a historic low of 31 percent, down from 74 percent the prior year. And, no surprise, a massive measles outbreak erupted.

So here is Kennedy telling us now: No, no, he had nothing--nothing-- to do with this. His trip to Samoa had nothing to do with the measles vaccine, and calling any claim ``industry propaganda trope,'' and yet he himself posted a blog about meeting with the Prime Minister and talking about a study to measure health outcomes following a natural experiment of studying children, some with no vaccination and some that were vaccinated.

And the anti-vax groups he met with talked about how profoundly important it is. Then Mr. Kennedy leaves. Vaccination rates drop down to 31 percent.

The measles outbreak was truly tragic. In total, more than 70 children died, right up until a door-to-door vaccination campaign brought the disaster to an end.

As HHS Secretary, Kennedy would be responsible for whether we keep our children vaccinated or subject them to, in his word, the same ``natural experiment'' that he was interested in testing in Samoa. Is that really what we want for our kids? Is that what we want for our elderly parents? That is a living nightmare, and it could truly be our reality with Kennedy heading up the Department of Health and Human Services.

And all the while that this is going on, while Kennedy is promoting this anti-vax theory, he and his family are profiting off the plan.

Now, I have been sounding the alarm about Kennedy since the minute Donald Trump announced that he would nominate him for HHS Secretary. It is not just that he is unqualified; his long history of promoting anti- science conspiracy theories make him disqualified.

This is a man who claimed ``there is no vaccine that is safe and effective''--``no vaccine.''

He said that the polio vaccine ``killed many, many more people than polio ever did.''

Now, Kennedy came to our committee and said: Don't worry. He swears he is not anti-vaccine. But he has spent years on an anti-vaccine crusade, spreading baseless conspiracy theories under the guise of protecting children, and making millions of dollars in the process.

And when, in Senate hearings, he was confronted with his own words, he simply denied saying them. He denied saying them, despite the videotapes, the transcripts, the blog posts, and the people who heard them.

Kennedy thinks he knows what he needs to say to try to get the job that will put him in charge of our vaccine program. So he says he didn't say exactly what he said. Kennedy's actions speak louder than his latest words. And time and time again, Kennedy has shown us who he is: an anti-science conspiracy peddler who is willing to gamble with American lives. We know who he is. We need to pay attention.

Let's do a quick count of some of the ways that, as HHS Secretary, Kennedy could make the anti-vaccine lawsuits and his own payouts even bigger. What could Kennedy do? Well, as Secretary of HHS, he could publish his anti-vaccine conspiracies, but this time on U.S. Government letterhead, something that might impress a jury in a subsequent trial. He could appoint people to the CDC vaccine panel who share his anti-vax views and let them do his dirty work. He could tell the CDC vaccine panel to remove a particular vaccine from the vaccination schedule. He could remove vaccines from a special compensation program, which ``would open up manufacturers to mass torts'' lawsuits. He could make more injuries eligible for compensation, even if there is no causal evidence. He could change vaccine court processes to make it easier to bring junk lawsuits that could get vaccines pulled from the market. He could turn over FDA to his friends at the law firm, and they could use it however benefits their lawsuits.

In short, as HHS Secretary, Kennedy would have the power to make healthcare decisions that would affect millions of Americans--working Americans, kids, seniors--on everything from vaccines to abortion to lifesaving drugs.

Kennedy would have the capacity as head of HHS to make it easier to sue vaccine manufacturers. And in an area where the profit margins on vaccines are quite modest, if those lawsuits mount up, vaccines could simply disappear from the market all together. Manufacturers could decide: You know, it is just not worth the lawsuits. We will go produce other drugs.

Those kinds of decisions are critically important, and the consequences are grave. For many Americans, they may be the difference between life and death, and they could change lives forever.

So while you and your family are forced to deal with the grave consequences of Kennedy's conspiracy-driven healthcare decisions, Kennedy could set himself up to make millions of dollars off his anti- vaccine crusade, just like he has been doing for decades.

Remember, the very first ethics agreement that Kennedy submitted to us on the Senate Finance Committee, he said that even while he served as Secretary of HHS, he planned to keep a financial stake in ongoing litigation, including vaccine-related litigation. That means that from the jump, Kennedy's plan was to keep making money off the backs of lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, some of which directly related to the very products he would have the power to regulate as Secretary of HHS.

So there he is. He has the power to regulate these drugs. He has the power to make life a little better or a little worse for the vaccine manufacturers. He has the power to make it more likely that lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers would succeed. And his initial plan was-- even while he sat there as Secretary of HHS, he was going to keep on making money from that.

This was a damning conflict of interest, so we called it out. Kennedy told us, OK, OK, he would submit an updated ethics agreement. Sounds good. What was his update? Well, he said that instead of personally keeping the millions that he would make off these ongoing lawsuits, he would hand that money directly to his son.

Later, he confirmed that the son he is handing his interests off to is the one who works at Wisner Baum, the same law firm that Kennedy has maintained this very lucrative arrangement with over the years, so far netting him a reported $2.5 million just in the last few years.

Kennedy has made clear that he can use his tools as HHS Secretary to open up the door for more anti-vax litigation and, once he is through as Secretary of HHS, go right back to Wisner Baum and cash in on the new flood of cases that Kennedy himself has unleashed. So that is Kennedy's idea of fixing an ethics issue.

Beyond that, Kennedy has flip-flopped countless times in his answers to the Finance Committee. He is untrustworthy. He has made so many contradictory statements that it has come to the point that it is hard to believe anything he says is true.

For example, Kennedy originally said he was not an attorney of record in any of these vaccine-related lawsuits, but we did a little homework, and we found at least five cases related to the vaccine litigation that hadn't been disclosed where Kennedy appears to be the attorney of record. That is important because what it means is that Kennedy is a lot closer to these cases than he is revealing--cases that he and his family will be able to make bank off even as he serves as Secretary at the HHS.

The importance of this litigation cannot be overstated. Just 20 years ago, we watched vaccine makers pull their product off the market because they didn't have protection from these kinds of lawsuits. The consequence of Kennedy's ability to make those lawsuits easier is also the ability to shut down access and manufacturing for vaccines for every one of us, and I think that is a terrible mistake.

Kennedy claims that he is taking on Big Pharma, but that is the lie he is peddling to hide his conflicts. I pressed him on real ways to take on the industry, including using march-in on Big Pharma's patents when they use taxpayer funds to bring drugs to market and then turn around and jack up prices on hard-working Americans and by having the government negotiate prices directly with Big Pharma on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries.

But Kennedy, after talking a big game about taking on Big Pharma, said no, he doesn't support march-in rights and, no, he didn't want to commit to defending Medicare price negotiations--two proven methods to take on the drug industry and put money back into Americans' pockets.

So whose side is he on? Well, one thing is for sure: RFK, Jr., is on the side of his own bottom line.

He has also refused to share a list of cases that he stands to benefit from. I told you he said, nope, he was not attorney of record on any cases. We dug around, and we found five. How many more are there? Well, here is what Kennedy said when we said: Just give us a list of the cases that you are participating in so we can take a look at the possible conflicts. His answer: The list is so long and the conflicts so clear that evidently it would be more damning than what we already know.

Kennedy's list of ethics issues and financial issues are a mile long, and there is still too much that he refuses to reveal.

Think about this. He has already told us enough about his conflicts, about how he plans to keep making money even while he is Secretary of HHS. He revealed all that right up front. He said: Yes, I am going to make money while I am Secretary of HHS. Yet, on basic questions like ``Can you just give us a list of the cases you participated in?'' he says ``No, I can't do that,'' which really makes you ask, what on Earth is he hiding?

He is dodging questions from the Senate, he is contradicting himself, and he keeps changing his answers in order to muddy the waters and really make it hard to understand what is going on.

Look, no one is fooled here. Kennedy has said he will ``slam shut the revolving door'' between government Agencies and the companies they regulate, but what he won't agree to is to cut off his own family's steady stream of money flowing in from lawsuits that he personally can directly affect while he is Secretary of HHS.

Kennedy knows that these conflicts are serious, and that is why he scrambled to update his ethics agreement and hand off his interests to his son in a desperate attempt to ``fix'' things. But that simply isn't good enough when millions of Americans' lives are hanging in the balance.

Don't take it just from me; take it from the Wall Street Journal editorial board. They wrote:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged during his confirmation hearing . . . to root out corruption between industry and government. Yet the man who wants to be the nation's Secretary of Health and Human Services refused to rule out personally making money from lawsuits against drug makers. This ought to be disqualifying.

The Wall Street Journal: ``This ought to be disqualifying.''

It is simple: If Kennedy wants to prove he was serious about ``slamming shut the revolving door'' between industry and people making money from their positions in government, I laid out a list of commitments he should make immediately.

Senator Wyden, the ranking member on the Finance Committee, and I wrote:

1. If confirmed as Secretary, you will recuse yourself from all vaccine-related communications and decisions. Given the breadth of your involvement in vaccine litigation, such a recusal would help ensure that you and your family do not benefit financially from official government actions that you will oversee and control. Such recusal will also ensure vaccine-related policymaking and communications are not inappropriately skewed by your personal views at the expense of scientific evidence.

That was part 1 that we want.

2. If confirmed as Secretary, you will recuse yourself from all matters related to HHS-regulated entities that are involved in cases or litigation that you or your family have an interest in. This will help ensure, for example, that you could not leverage your position as Secretary by conditioning a company's request regarding an unrelated manner (e.g., an FDA approval) on such company agreeing to settle an anti- vaccination case in which you or your family have a financial interest.

3. If confirmed as Secretary, you will not litigate cases involving vaccines, represent parties in VICP-related cases, or have a financial interest in such litigation or cases for at least 4 years after leaving office. As Secretary, you would be in a position to influence future anti-vaccine cases and litigation in ways that would benefit you personally after leaving HHS. For example, you could direct the CDC to remove a vaccine from the vaccine schedule, change vaccine labeling requirements, or make procedures in special vaccine court more advantageous for plaintiffs. Then, if you leave HHS and immediately return to litigating against vaccine makers, you would stand to profit from rules you helped reshape. This commitment would further mitigate the appearance of a conflict of interest while you are in office.

These commitments will help ensure that you do not have a direct or indirect financial incentive to interfere with HHS's vaccine proceedings or other matters involving the manufacturer of Gardasil or any other HHS-regulated entity.

In other words, Senator Wyden and I laid out a path where he truly could avoid the conflicts of interest. If he wants to serve his country and not his own pocketbook, we have shown him a way that he can do this.

Senator Kaine and I followed up on this and wrote to Kennedy:

At your Senate confirmation hearing, you pledged to ``remove the financial conflicts of interests in [HHS] agencies.''

Continuing with our letter:

You should start by mitigating your own conflicts of interests, including by (1) relinquishing your direct and indirect financial interests in matters over which you will have power at HHS; (2) recusing yourself from matters involving your former clients, former employers, or entities in which you have a financial interest; and (3) for at least four years after you leave office, committing to not lobbying HHS, litigating cases against pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers, or joining the industries or entities that you interact with at HHS.

In other words, we showed you another way that you can get this done.

Look, this is just common sense. I would hope that my Republican colleagues would agree that our HHS nominee should not have ongoing, lucrative agreements that enable his immediate family to line their pockets while he influences healthcare decisions that impact millions of Americans.

It is not just attacks on vaccines that we have to worry about from the Trump administration. In the middle of the night last Friday, Donald Trump announced deep cuts to the National Institutes of Health funding, which powers the lifesaving research and medical breakthroughs at universities and medical institutions across the country, especially in my home State of Massachusetts. These Trump cuts will stop research that is working to help cure diseases, it will force people who are working now to lose good jobs, and it will literally threaten people's lives.

As head of HHS, Kennedy would oversee the National Institutes of Health, and he would green-light Trump's plan to gut the Agency. He has made no commitments to protect the critical, lifesaving research that NIH funds, and maybe that should be no surprise given his years of attacking basic scientific facts.

Listen to what experts have had to say about what these cuts will mean for families across America:

People are not able to do their work if there isn't an infrastructure. This will have a huge impact on health research in this country.

We're all reeling. This would decimate medical research.

This is a surefire way to cripple lifesaving research and innovation. America's competitors will relish this self- inflicted wound.

As one expert said:

If you're a cancer patient in a clinical trial, it is not a theoretical undertaking, it is treatment.

For so many rare diseases and illnesses where research is already underfunded, like childhood cancer, researchers have said:

If it's not federal funding, there's nowhere else to go-- that's a real impact on the short [term] and [the] long term.

I don't know how you make that up. These funding cuts are putting scientists in a position where they have to default on the promises they made--promises they made to people to join their studies, promises they made to other researchers to join them, promises they made to build up the labs and to build up the work that would make a difference in our world.

When the NIH and the NSF put out their solicitations, they are asking for critical scientific research to be done on behalf of the American people. That research cures diseases and saves lives. The institutions that apply for these solicitations are saying enthusiastically: Yes, we can do that. Yes, we share that dream. Yes, we believe that we can make a better product, that we can make a better medicine, that we can make a better treatment for people who are suffering, and we want to be part of that.

And now here we are in chaos and confusion, and the U.S. Government is trying to break that contract. Americans will suffer because of it.

This is Trump's plan for Americans' health, and Kennedy will be a rubberstamp for whatever Donald Trump wants to do.

Let's talk just a little bit more about that COVID vaccine.

Do you remember how, in the dead of the pandemic, hundreds of millions of Americans were counting on that vaccine as the light at the end of the tunnel; how, when we were shut away from our friends and family and trying to keep ourselves and our communities safe, that vaccine allowed us to come together again; how that vaccine saved countless more lives that otherwise would have been lost to COVID?

Well, just make sure you know: Kennedy tried to stop you and your family from having access to the COVID vaccine.

I will just read a little portion of one of the articles from last month on this:

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump's choice to lead the nation's health agencies, formally asked the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the authorization of all--

All-- COVID vaccines during a deadly phase of the pandemic when thousands of Americans were still dying every week.

Mr. Kennedy filed a petition with the FDA in May 2021, demanding that officials rescind authorization for the shots and refrain from approving any COVID vaccine in the interim. Just 6 months earlier, Mr. Trump had declared the COVID vaccines a miracle. At the time Mr. Kennedy filed the petition, half of American adults were receiving their shots. Schools were starting to reopen, and churches were filling. Estimates have begun to show that the rapid roll-out of COVID vaccines have already saved 140,000 lives in the United States.

The petition was filed on behalf of the nonprofit that Mr. Kennedy founded and led, Children's Health Defense, which we talked about earlier. It claimed the risks of vaccines outweighed the benefits and that the vaccines weren't necessary because good treatments were available, including ivermectin and--I just can't believe this-- hydroxychloroquine, which had already been deemed ineffective against the virus.

The petition received little notice when it was filed. Mr. Kennedy was then on the fringes of the public health establishment, and the Agency denied it within months. Public health experts told about the filing said it was truly shocking.

You know, I want to underscore this one because Mr. Kennedy is saying now--not only is he saying he is not an anti-vaxxer; he is saying he wants you to still be able to vaccinate your children if you want to do that. Yet look at Mr. Kennedy's own actions. Mr. Kennedy tried to stop all of us--everyone in America--from getting access to the COVID vaccine. He cites junk science. It was already known to be junk science at the time that he cites it. He cites junk science in order to say, not just that he doesn't want to take the vaccine or not just that he doesn't want to give it to his kids, but he didn't want anybody in America to be able to get that.

So that is the man that the Republicans will be voting on to decide whether or not he makes healthcare policy in the United States--someone who is continuing to line his own pocket with lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and someone who has tried to stop at least one vaccine from being distributed to anyone anywhere in America.

Look, when Kennedy says he doesn't believe in vaccines, which he has said many times, believe him. When his attempt at fixing his ethics issue is passing his stake to his son, believe him. When he says he will do whatever Donald Trump wants on abortion, believe him. Don't say: No one will let him go that far, because they will let him go that far.

Republicans voting for Kennedy know exactly who they are voting for-- someone who spreads baseless conspiracy theories, someone who profits off making our kids sicker, someone who will do whatever Donald Trump tells him to do, whether it is cutting off cancer research funding or banning abortion medication.

Let us be very clear: When it comes to your health and your well- being and the health and well-being of your friends, your family, your community, Kennedy is disqualified, dangerous, and cannot be given the power to make critical healthcare decisions. I urge my colleagues to vote no on his nomination.

I see that Senator Kaine is here. Senator Kaine has been a tireless partner in the fight to help protect the Nation's healthcare system, and I appreciate his being here tonight.

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