Department of Health and Human Services

Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to speak about the extreme cuts that have affected the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control.

First of all, the DOGE operation starts out with a premise that it is attacking waste, fraud, and abuse. And I am for that. Anyplace that we can save taxpayers money by responsible assessment of what programs are working or aren't, anytime we can uncover waste or certainly fraud and abuse, I want to do that, and I want that to be done across the board. Whether you are talking about health programs where they could be better organized or they could be more efficiently run to achieve the goal of better services for the people you represent and I represent for all Americans, I want to do that.

But how is DOGE going about it?

And we are here to talk about how they are doing it in the Department of Health and Human Services, under Mr. Kennedy. Basically, they are doing it by sending out firing notices to people. Over 5,000 people have been fired, and that includes 700 in the Food and Drug Administration, 1,200 in the National Institutes of Health, and 600 in the Centers for Disease Control.

Here is the question, and the answer is obvious: If you want to make a program more efficient, do you fire the people first and essentially erode any capacity of that program to deliver the services that the American people need? Or do you study the organization? Do you kick the tires? Do you investigate and analyze where the issues are that can be addressed by a comprehensive plan that would include getting rid of any waste? It would include getting rid, obviously, of any fraud and abuse.

But what DOGE is doing is not that. It doesn't have a plan. What it has is a decision to fire people. So, essentially, DOGE is saying that the higher the body count of people who are fired, then the more the savings will be. Well, there is truth in that. If you just fire people and they are not on the payroll, you are going to save taxpayer money. But does that mean that you are getting waste, fraud, and abuse out of the system, or are you just wrecking the program? It clearly is going to be the latter.

You are just wrecking the program because you didn't even take the time to examine what is going on and how best to do it. Think about it. In the National Institutes of Health, there are investigators, there are scientists. These are people who are working on research that is important to your State and mine about diseases, about cures, about vaccines, about pandemics, things that--you know, American people are entitled to have some confidence and security that we have the best minds addressing health issues and focusing on cures to diseases that all of us can be subject to or the people we love, that they will be doing that job.

But these people are now just fired. They are gone. That means--just think about it. An NIH scientist, that is somebody who probably has a Ph.D, went to one of our State institutions. It might have been a land- grant college in North Carolina or a land-grant college in Vermont. And there is probably an enormous amount of talent in that person who was able to achieve a Ph.D in scientific research. And there is probably a good deal of public investment in the career of that person with the return being that person is going to be doing research on trying to cure diseases. And that person may well have gotten some Federal grants, including college assistance or Ph.D investigatory assistance.

That could be hundreds of thousands of dollars the taxpayers really invested in supporting a person who has become a scientist, helping us on very important research that is really good for the American people.

Boom. They go to work, or they are at home. They get an email, and they say: Don't show up for work; you are fired.

There is a certain cruelty in a lot of these notices because it also has an assertion that your performance has been subpar. Of course, we find out there has been no performance review; and, in many cases, these people who were fired supposedly because of subpar performance, in fact, did just have a performance review that said you are doing a fantastic job.

Or think about Food and Drug Administration. Their job is to review, among other things, medications that can provide life-enhancing, lifesaving, life-extending, pain-relieving medications that Americans are going to need and can benefit by. The sooner that work of investigation gets done, the sooner that the approval decisions can be made, the sooner cures get to market and to the folks in this country.

Boom. They are fired.

Again, these people, some of whom do have Ph.Ds, as I mentioned, but others of whom have been at the FDA for 15 or 20 years and have that institutional knowledge of how it works--these people are getting fired independent of any performance review, independent of any assessment of where do we need more people or where do we need fewer people or what are some of the functions that no longer need to be done versus some functions where we actually may need to enhance the staff to get a better job for the American people.

What is so bogus about DOGE is that it is not about waste, fraud, and abuse. It really is not because there would have to be an investigation, a plan, people looking at how the functions are being performed. It is simply a mechanism to justify firing people and lowering the head count.

And as I mentioned, you know what? That will ``save money,'' but it will destroy the capacity of these organizations that all of us agree are doing incredibly important work. It is going to destroy their ability to do it. It is just mangling the services in the area of Health and Human Services that are so essential to the well-being of the people in this country.

By the way, this has a real economic impact; and it is the economic impact, first and foremost, among those individuals who lost their jobs. But it is a real economic impact because we are eroding the infrastructure of science, of inquiry, and of investigation for better health cures. You don't destroy that and put it back together again overnight. That is what is so wrong-headed about the DOGE approach to things--body count versus better service, better performance, more sustainability.

Mr. President, you couldn't have a worse approach if your goal is more efficiency, better service, and better outcomes.

The other question that is going to be recurring for the American people is the likelihood--the inevitability, actually--of massive reductions in aid for Medicaid. Under the version of the House budget reconciliation act, they have to come up with trillions of dollars in savings. The only place you are going to get that is by cutting Medicaid.

We have a contradiction here because the President says he loves Medicaid, but he also says he loves the House bill. And the House bill does not love Medicaid. What the House bill does is it attacks Medicaid.

In Vermont, we have 20 percent or so, a little more, of our folks who depend on Medicaid for healthcare. It is kids from low-income families; it is seniors. Two out of three of our nursing home beds are paid for by Medicaid. You are going to have families where the kids are really trying to help their parents. Their parents need a nursing home, and they are going to get kicked out, literally. That is what happens.

Finally, what we know is, why is this happening? Why are these firings on a mass level being made when there has been no study and no plan in place to indicate that action will improve services or, in the long run, save money for the American people? It is being done because there is a goal to have a tax cut. That is a fair-and-square debate. What should our tax rate be; should we have a tax cut; if we have a tax cut, how do you allocate; how much goes to corporations; how much goes to billionaires; how much goes to everyday people?

But to have that debate without acknowledging that the way you are going to pay for it is by taking away healthcare for everyday Americans, that is not on the level. That is what is happening here, is that there is an agenda: Get that tax cut.

I happen to profoundly disagree with the tax cut for major multinational corporations, and I profoundly disagree with lowering taxes for billionaires--totally disagree with that. But when it is the situation that we are going to pay for it by taking away nursing home beds from Vermonters, from folks in the Carolinas, that is really appalling. We should not do it.

I am here with my colleagues to defend our commitment to good scientific research, to good cancer research, to good healthcare access for poor kids and seniors, and to sound the alert that that is what is at stake despite what the President may say about his ``love'' for Medicare. What he clearly has as his major agenda item is that tax cut.

I will acknowledge we can have a debate fair and square about that tax cut. But I think it is incumbent on all of us to acknowledge that the path to the President getting his tax cut marches right through access to healthcare in an attack on Medicaid.

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